Riba is usury. Usury is commonly understood as the lending of money at illegally high rates of interest. But riba, or usury, in Islam is the lending of money on interest, regardless of the rate of interest! When money is lent on interest, then money by itself, independent of any labor or effort, or the assumption of any risk, increases over time. The increase is realized through the exploitation of labor, goods or property since Allah, the Most High, has unambiguously declared that nothing can be had without effort or labor(6:85, 11:85, 26:183, etc.). Riba is also at work when wealth is sucked from the masses through deception and other forms of fraud. Such, for example, is the case of paper, plastic and electronic money. There is also riba in speculative transactions. More than 60% of all money transfers in the world economy today represent speculative transactions.

Not only must the true believer wage the greatest possible struggle to keep himself and his family free from riba but, also, he must exert himself to bring relief (ma 'oun) to suffering humanity. That requires that a revolutionary struggle be first waged to extricate the world of Islam from the venomous bloodstained clutches of riba. If a believer does not struggle to guard himself from riba, and if he does not respond appropriately to oppression in the world (which includes the oppression caused by riba) then his faith is hollow! The Qur 'an gives precisely that warning in Surah al-Ma'oun.

If we struggle to understand the truth in the Qur 'an and Sunnah, particularly as it pertains to the prohibition of riba, and to be faithful to it regardless of the price we may have to pay, it may still be possible for us to protect ourselves from that enemy who is waging economic warfare on us through riba. After all, did our Prophet (s) not warn us of seven great sins which we should avoid:

"Abu Huraira narrated that the Prophet said: Avoid the seven great destructive sins. They (the people) asked: 0 Allah's Apostle! What are they? He said: To join partners in worship with Allah; to practice sorcery; to kill the life which Allah has forbidden except for a just cause (according to Islamic law); to consume riba, to consume the property of an orphan; to give one's back to the enemy and fleeing from the battlefield at the time of fighting, and to accuse chaste women who never even think of anything which violates chastity and are good believers. "(Bukhari)

We live, today, in a world in which the practice of riba has once again brought great economic oppression upon an unsuspecting mankind. And the oppression grows worse every day. The twenty-five years which have elapsed since 1971, when the Bretton Woods Accord collapsed, have witnessed the virtual enslavement by a predatory global elite of the periphery of the usurious world economy. The warning of this book, published in New York in 1997, and written from an essentially Qur'anic perspective, is that the next twenty-five years are likely to confirm the economic enslavement of all humanity by that predatory global elite.

The Qur 'an not only prohibits riba but also declares that the Torah and the Gospel were altered to modify the divine prohibition of riba. As a consequence riba has survived, and because of riba, among other things, we live today in an age in which values are Collapsing. Honesty, integrity, truthfulness, character and faith are ...fast disappearing from the world. Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) has spoken of the coming of such an age as a sign of the coming of the last day. He said:

. . . A man would sleep and honesty (or faith) would be taken from his heart and only its trace will remain in his heart like the trace of a dark spot; then a man will go to sleep during which honesty will decrease further still, so that its trace will resemble the trace of a blister as when an ember is dropped on one's foot which would make it swell, and one would see it swollen but there would be nothing inside. People would be carrying out their trade but hardly will there be a trustworthy person. It will be said: In such-and-such a tribe there is an honest man, and later it would be said about some man: 'What a wise, polite and strong man he is'; although he will not have faith equal even to a mustard seed in his heart. (Bukhari)

There are many today who would readily agree that the conditions described in this hadith are now fulfilled. And so, the prevalence of riba itself constitutes a sign of the coming of the last day! Riba has destroyed values. None can be trusted! A corrupted mankind, corrupted by unquenchable greed, would steal even the wealth of orphans today.

By Sheikh Imran Hosein