Islam & the Modern World · Wealth, Riba & the Economy
Christianity banned interest too
In short
- 1.Lateran and Church councils condemned usury repeatedly through the medieval period.
- 2.Aquinas argued that charging for the use of money was selling what does not exist.
- 3.The prohibition was relaxed in the early modern period as commerce grew, not because the texts changed.
The claim being examined
Interest-based banking is treated as morally neutral, as though no serious religious tradition ever objected.
The Islamic position
The Church prohibited usury for over a thousand years, and Christian Europe changed its position rather than Islam changing its own.
Analysis
The historical record here is strong and useful. Usury was condemned in canon law across the medieval period: the Second Lateran Council (1139) and the Council of Vienne (1311-12) both legislated against it, and Thomas Aquinas argued in the Summa Theologiae (II-II, q.78) that to charge for the use of money lent is to sell what does not exist, since money is consumed in use. Calvin's letter on usury (1545) is a recognised turning point in Protestant thought, permitting moderate interest in commercial contexts, and the shift accelerated with the rise of banking in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; Benjamin Nelson traced this development in The Idea of Usury (1949). Historians rightly note that practice always outran doctrine and that lending continued through legal devices throughout the medieval period, so avoid painting a picture of a spotless Christian economy. The argument to make is narrow and defensible: the ban was doctrinal and long-standing, and it was Western practice that moved. That reframes the Muslim position from strange to conservative — Islam kept a rule that Europe abandoned under commercial pressure.
From the Qur'an
يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا لَا تَأْكُلُوا الرِّبَا أَضْعَافًا مُّضَاعَفَةً
O you who believe, do not consume riba, doubled and multiplied.
From the Bible
Hebrew
Lends at interest, and takes profit; shall he then live? He shall not live.
Read it in their BibleSources
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II q.78 · Benjamin Nelson, The Idea of Usury (1949) · Second Lateran Council (1139) · Benjamin Nelson, The Idea of Usury: From Tribal Brotherhood to Universal Otherhood (1949)
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