The attitude expressed by my two readers is the one Islam aims to cultivate in its followers. When a person is involved in some sort of action, whether on a regular basis, as it is the case with these readers, or occasionally, as happens with all of us, that person must first find out whether that action is acceptable or not from the Islamic point of view. It is an attitude we must all cultivate that whatever we do must always aim at earning God’s pleasure. We benefit both in this life and in the life to come when we make that aim our guiding principle because God is always pleased with what is useful to His creatures. He has only commanded us to do what serves our own best interests and those of our fellow human beings. The Prophet says: "The dearest of all people to God are those who bring most benefit to His servants." When we try to conduct our lives in accordance with the laws He has enacted, we benefit both by being obedient and by the fact that what He has commanded us is meant to serve our best interests.

Another point which I would like to make clear at the outset is that we read in the Qur’an very strong condemnation of usury. This is further emphasized in many pronouncements by the Prophet. Some people who tend to be strict often equate interest as it is practiced in the modern banking system with usury to the extent that they tend to see the one as synonymous with the other. When translating Islamic statements dealing with usury, they invariably use the word ‘interest’ for ‘usury.’ I feel that this view is rather too narrow.

There are undoubtedly similarities and differences between the two which make it necessary that we deal with each of them separately. Before anybody jumps to any conclusion, I would like to make it clear that I think we are justified in saying that the similarities are sufficient to make us consider most interest-based transactions usurious in nature. Hence, they are forbidden. However, we still need to look at every type of banking transactions separately, in order to know whether we can say it is acceptable or not.

Both readers are worried about getting involved with interest when they do their jobs. They realize that interest is not lawful and they want to steer away from it. I may remind my readers here of the Hadith in which the Prophet emphasizes that God curses "the person who devours usury, the one who pays it, the writer of the contract between the two parties and those who act as witnesses to the contract." So the prohibition is very strict indeed. Moreover, it applies to the peripheries of the transaction as well as to its substance.

However, when we consider whether working in a bank is legitimate or not, we cannot slam a blanket ruling and say that all jobs a bank offers are forbidden, because some of them may not be. It really depends on the type of job one does, rather than the institution he works for. There are bank jobs, some of which are senior ones, which have little to do with earning or paying interest. We cannot pronounce these as forbidden. There is nothing in Islam to prevent a Muslim from working for a Christian, although the latter may firmly believe Jesus Christ to be the son of God. Which is a great offense against God: to devour usury or to falsely allege that He has a son? What we say is that if a person works in a bank and his job does not involve conducting or facilitating interest transactions then it is permissible for him to hold such a job and his salary is perfectly legitimate to earn.

In modern banking, there is a variety of services that are permissible, while others are not within what is acceptable from the Islamic point of view. For example, depositing money to earn interest is not acceptable, because there is much akin to usury in such deposit accounts. On the other hand, deposits that are invested in commercial projects and earn a percentage of the profits made by such projects or incur a portion of the loss are lawful.

Moreover, if he is doing some job that involves interest merely to gain banking experience and his aim is to be able to develop an alternative system which is more in line with Islamic values and principles, then he is to be encouraged. He should leave his job when he has gained all the experience he needs.

On the other hand, if a person works in a bank only because this is the only job he could get, and he is certain that quitting means that he would be unemployed for a while, then we tell him that he should stay in his job and keep on the look-out for an alternative. Once he has secured another job which is more satisfactory from the Islamic point of view, he should leave immediately. There is no virtue in being unemployed or leaving one’s family in need of what charity others may give.

The writer of the second letter is not particularly worried about having another job. He is highly educated, and knows that he can work as a teacher or an accountant. He is worried that such jobs also involve working with interest. He has a very valid point. The Qur’anic threat to believers to quit all dealings with usury wants that unless the system is abandoned, God and His messenger will declare war against them. This threat is not meant for individuals only, but also for communities and societies. The community which operates a system of usury will be at war with God and His messenger. That is a very serious threat indeed. Yet he is carrying things too far. A teacher of mathematics who teaches percentage and gives examples of how interest is calculated is not the same as one who works in a bank and is heavily involved in carrying through transactions that are interest-based. Nor is an accountant in a private company so much involved either, even when the company does not have any scruples about earning or paying interest. That part of his work which deals with interest will always represent a small part of his duties, unless he happens to work in a finance company, which is probably worse than working for a bank.

If he is so troubled by the fact that he works for a commercial bank which does not implement the Islamic system, he should try to change his job. If he takes up a teaching or accounting job, God will reward him indeed for quitting his job in order to live in accordance with Islamic teachings. We may all be contaminated with the banking system that is based on interest, but many of us are not so heavily involved, and those are certainly in a better position than whose who help to operate that system.

As for prayers within the bank premises, the Prophet says : "The whole earth has been made a prayer place and a source of purification for me." That obviously includes his followers in all generations. Every place on earth may be a prayer place for a Muslim. Similarly, every spring of water can be a source of purification. In the absence of water, we may resort to dry ablution ( Tayammum ), which uses clean dust for purification.

What the argument entails is that the actions done in a particular place may render it unfit for prayer. Such a view cannot be given haphazardly. It must be supported by firm evidence. The fact is that only the absence of purity in a particular place renders it unfit for prayer. If some impurity falls on a particular spot, we must not pray in that spot until the impurity has been removed. Here we are speaking of physical impurity. This does not apply to what may be considered mental impurity, such as forbidden practices.

There is no statement in the Qur'an or in the Hadith which suggests that the home or office of a money lender is unfit for prayer. We may have to adopt a certain position towards people who are engaged in forbidden practices, but that is a different matter altogether.

It is very interesting to receive a letter like this one in which a reader argues a case in an orderly relaxed manner, defending his point of view and airing thoughts that are inevitably shared by numerous other readers.

My reader argues that the role of the bank these days is that of a medium, facilitating the all beneficial need of introducing savers to businessmen. Thus the money of the first is made available to the second who are thus able to utilize their expertise and business acumen in order to ensure the growth of the investment. He argues that there is a strong need for this service which is provided by banks which actually act in this respect as clearing houses. That there is such a need cannot be doubted. But whether the system operated by the bank satisfies Islamic requirements is a totally different matter. My reader tries to show that it does meet its requirements, particularly the changes required in the rate of returns on investment.

When the objection is raised to the interest system on the basis that the returns are fixed in advance, some people think that if the rate of interest changes then that objection is met. We find this argument clearly exposed by our reader, who goes to the extent of saying that if the rate of interest drops, then both the depositor and the borrower lose. If the rate of interest goes up, both of them are bound to benefit.

To start with, this is not correct. Fluctuations in the rate of interest affect depositors and borrowers in opposite ways. If the rate of interest drops, the borrower is pleased because the charge he has to pay to the bank on his loan becomes less, and he benefits as a result, while the saver or depositor receives less on his money, which is something definitely unwelcome to him. The same is true when the rate of interest goes up. The depositor is pleased because he receives more, but the borrower is displeased because he has to pay more. In business, partners either profit together or lose together. If you are a sleeping partner in a business, your share increases at the same time as that of the active partner, because the income comes from a better performance in the business. When the business does not do all that well, both your shares drop.

Moreover, changes in the rate of interest do not reflect the performance of the particular business project in which your money has been placed, they only reflect the situation in the money market which is affected by considerations totally different from how individual businesses are performing. Changes in interest rates are determined by central banks which have a totally different role from that of ordinary banks and in isolation of individual business performance.

Moreover, the depositor will never share in the loss of the business in which his money is invested. Suppose you have deposited a certain amount in a bank and the bank gives this total amount to a borrower who runs a particular business. It so happens that the project in which money has been invested fails and makes considerable loss. What is your position at the end of the year? You will still receive the interest agreed upon between you and the bank, allowing for any changes in between, and you will not even bother to know to whom your money was lent and what sort of performance it made. We cannot in any way associate this banking transaction with the partnership approved by Islam in which both investor and borrower are actual partners and they share in any profits or losses. The fact is that there is no partnership whatsoever in the arrangements made between the bank and its depositors on the one hand, or between the bank and its borrowers on the other. There are two separate transactions which the bank is happy to run, because at the end of the day, it stands to make much profit. You need to look at the announced performance of leading banks in most countries to discover that they actually make huge profits which come mostly from their running this facility.

Besides, one of the basic functions of a bank is to make money available to those who need it. This raises questions on the whole operation because it facilitates for its depositors taking the position of lender. Muslims generally would rather not have the dubious privilege of becoming lenders either to business projects or indeed for any other purpose. It is far easier for us to consider an "investment" role for banks. But this relates to a different aspect of banking operation. Leading banks nowadays operate systems for investing the money of their depositors, putting it in shares and stocks. Such systems are much easier to sort out so that they become acceptable from the Islamic point of view. But when the bank is lending out our money at a profit, then it places us in a position of a lender who gets back more than the principal he lent. The fact is that when you lend someone else an amount of money and you agree with him either explicitly or implicitly that the amount he will return to you at the end of the period of the loan will be more than what you paid him, then this transaction is 'riba', or, to use the proper English term for it, "usurious". The Prophet says: "Every loan that brings in a gain is usurious." It is perfectly permissible that a person who has borrowed money from another pays it back and gives the lender something extra, a gift perhaps or an increase in the amount, but this must not be the result of any prior agreement between them, either explicit or implicit. Indeed, there should be no hint that the lender will be getting anything other than the amount he had advanced. My reader makes much of the differences between what a bank does and the money lender does, to the extent that he prefers to use the Arabic term, 'riba' and makes it clear that he is against usury. At the end of his letter he claims that 'riba' is "an essentially untranslatable term." In this he is totally mistaken because riba is a simple Arabic term which means, from the linguistic point of view, "excess."

In a financial transaction, 'riba' refers to the payment of something over and above what has been given in the first place. Early Muslim scholars have told us what is exactly meant by 'riba', when they said that the person would borrow some money for a specified period. At the end of that period he would go to the lender and tell him that he is unable to repay the loan and requires an extension of it. The extension is granted on condition that the amount he repays will be higher. Is this not practiced by banks today? Does the bank charge you the same amount if you repay your loan over three months or six months or a year? Do you not pay much more interest when you make your repayment over an extended period?

Besides, who says that banking arrangements do not exploit the weakness of those who need the money? My reader gives the case only of people who have business acumen, but what about borrowing from a bank for a specific purpose which is not expected to generate income, such as buying a car, or indeed a diamond ring for your wife? What does a bank do after the collapse of a business project to which it had made some advances? Is it not true that there is no consideration of the weakness or the status of the borrower? Instead, receivers and liquidators are called in without any regard to the terrible position in which the borrower finds himself.