Question

Interest income is forbidden activity according to Islam; please comment on the payment of interest against the loan. Your prompt reply will be highly appreciated.

Answer

We cannot consider payment of interest to be Ḥarām as it is only receiving the interest that is made forbidden in the Qur’ān. There are some Aḥādīth that are interpreted to mean that the Prophet (sws) has condemned paying interest. A little deliberation on these Aḥādīth shows that it is in fact the facilitator of the transaction and not the payer of interest that is condemned.

In the interest based economy that we are facing in our era the most practical advice seems to be to avoid paying interest only where this does not put us in extra ordinary difficulty. However every human being has the right to secure what is generally considered to be a necessity of life and if taking interest based loan is the only mean to make this happen then we cannot say it should be avoided. Securing the necessities of life is preferred in this situation. If we however assume a society in which there are plenty of good alternatives to interest based loans, then we can say for sure that in this particular society paying interest is deliberate cooperating in sin and is therefore condemnable.

Answered by: Farhad Shafti

Date: 2015-03-27