> one thing most religious traditions have common is how they ban usury/interest which would make much of global finance we have today “haram”. The way Islamic

> one thing most religious traditions have common is how they ban usury/interest which would make much of global finance we have today “haram”. The way Islamic finance avoids interest [1] - the bank buys a property and sells/leases it back to the borrower at a slightly higher price, paid in installments - sounds more like semantics than actually avoiding interest altogether. It seems to rely on a belief that there is a fundamental difference between rent paid on borrowed money (AKA interest), and rent paid borrow the use of real property. The virtue in Islamic banking seems to be that it has a healthy skepticism of financial derivative products, preferring to invest directly in physical assets and businesses. This probably avoids a great deal of risk (trading off the upside too). 1. https://www.guidanceresidential.com/resources/faith-based-financing/what-is-an-islamic-mortgage-and-how-does-it-work/ https://www.guidanceresidential.com/resources/faith-based-fi...