₦airaland Forum

[quote][/quote]When I first heard of the issue of Islamic banking, I thought the words were misplaced. So I said Sanusi was merely referring to interest-free banking. In my reckoning, it was as much an Islamic thing as it was a Christian thing. The hoopla was therefore unnecessary.

But I had to look deeper. The fray intensified as nerves frayed across pious lines. The CBN boss, the boisterous and diminutive Sanusi, would not miss out on the theatre. If Sanusi does not meet with theatre, he would have to invent it. He loves the fight. He dares his opponents. Coming from a pedigree both colourful and austere, he wants to make a show in pursuit of old-fashioned ideas.

So, ancient and modern meet in the small man who has a lot of plunk and thunder. We should not forget that this man’s first love is not to be a CBN boss, however he seems to relish it. He wants to be the emir of Kano. That can come from a sense of revenge. His family lost out in the royal battle decades ago, and he feels a historic challenge to retrieve it. He would rather be a family hero than a national icon. Rather he has become celebrity as irritant.

So it is not surprising that he talks as though from a throne. He deploys poise, articulation, defiance, authority, a certain royal energy quite out of place with the aplomb persona of a central bank top shot. But Nigeria is a country where this sort can blossom. When Alan Greenspan shook the system in his day, it was on the quiet side. A Sanusi in America would mean a sort of professional suicide. It is only a man of Sanusi’s background though that can fell hefty bankers, play hero absent-mindedly and contradict himself and get away with it. He wants to cleanse the banks and later confesses cleansing the banks would not cleanse the economy. He is a contradiction of hubris in humility and humility in hubris. He abides the opposites. He wants to be at once regal and messianic, a revolutionary at war with himself.

So it is with Islamic banking. He explains the issue of Islamic banking as though it is only an economic issue. He does not mind riling the Christians. He does not care to reach out to them. He just wants to do his job.

Then you saw unrestrained goons like Datti Ahmed calling for war and another mullah with the Bible in Oritsejafor boasting as though we are in the years of The Crusades when Christians battled Muslims. In the rough-and-tumble of the debate, it is obvious no side is reasoning, and to use the cliché, we have a storm in a tea cup.

If you read the Bible well, you would realise that Christianity has nothing against the principle of Islamic banking. Usury in the Bible is sin. It is also sin in the Koran. So, it seems to me that the Oritsejafors of this world are opposing Islamic banking because they call it Islamic banking and because the bank would have a board of Sharia clerics to ensure the bank is faithful to its ideals. By opposing Islamic banking, they are supporting interests, the sin of capitalism. It is the supreme irony of clerics trying to go to war in defence of the worldly system. Friendship with the world, warns Paul in the Bible, is enmity with God.

Christendom did not go the way of the so-called modern banking until the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, which at the end was neither holy nor Roman, according to historians. What emerged at the fall of Catholicism was what Max Weber designated as the spirit of capitalism. But that spirit came not from infidels but from Christians. A group of Christians called Calvinists redefined the attitude of the faithful and consequently the world and history. As Weber, a sociologist, explained it, the Calvinists wanted to turn the kind of devotion they had for God to the world. They defined this in terms of work.

It was this group that laid the foundation for the modern view of work and profit, the contempt for indolence, the calculation of time as money, the proliferation of the professions, the scientific view of things with the masters of the Renaissance. A critical turn of mind overtook us, and the god of mammon started to compete feverishly with that of God. They could have heard what Jesus said: make unto yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness… Some scholars said Jesus encouraged dishonesty. We know the parable of the unjust servant, and the fact that he was unjust told the story. Jesus did not call for interest. Nowhere in the scriptures does so.

Banking was a story of Christians who dumped strict Christian principles in favour of profit. Americans are at bottom Calvinists. They are puritans in faith and puritans in business. They pursue faith and profit with equal enthusiasm. That was why Max Weber said the spirit abandoned what was called enchantment, a world peopled by only spirits. They became disenchanted and followed not only the spirit of God but also the spirit of capitalism.

What is called Islamic finance only calls for a strict adherence to a different sort of capitalism. It is wrong to deny Islamic finance the description of capitalism. The Muslim world wants capitalism in its own way. It calls for what it calls profit sharing. Rather than give a loan to a man to buy cars and charge for interest, it would buy the car at above the market value and sell it to the customer. The buyer will decide whether the profit is what he or she can live with. There will be a Sharia council to watch operations, but there is nothing wrong with that. If Christians are so worried about that, then they should not patronise the banks. The bank is not being imposed on everybody. If you decide not to use the bank, then go to other banks.

It is one of the fastest growing institutions in the world of commerce, and it is flourishing in Europe and the United States. It is better than what we have today when banks are lazy and charge astronomical interests for loans that help nobody but themselves. About 250 mutual funds and major banks have some form of Islamic banking to those who want it. Islamic banking is collaborative banking, and the customer takes part in negotiating terms and shares profits with the bank.

What the world witnessed in the past few years with shylock CEOs has drawn quite a few people to the Islamic alternative. Even the Vatican has argued that “the principle of Islamic finance may represent a possible cure for ailing markets.” This is the Catholic Church.

I wonder if many who oppose this brand of banking understand what it means. As I noted earlier, it has to do with the context of Sanusi’s rhetoric. It ought to be explained not only as an economic venture by a competing deity, but a practical way to do business. Capitalism grew out of the word laissez faire, which implies that others are free to make profit. Let a thousand traders bloom.

This is not the time to ratchet up rhetoric over religion, especially in these days of rampaging Boko Haram partisans. Rather than destroy Islamic banking, let us see how we can make it work.

http://www.thenationonlineng.net/2011/index.php/columnist/monday/sam-omatseye/14247-protestant-ethic-and-spirit-of-islamic-banking.html
From the master himself, Sam Omatseye

Another from Tatalo Alamu

Nigeria is suddenly crawling with fanatics and fundamentalists of all religious hues. There is so much rancour and rabid hate in the land one begins to suspect that some people are working towards a predetermined agenda to terminate the existence of the nation. As if the scourge of Boko Haram, the minimum wages palaver, tenure elongation rumours, the arrival of monsoon- like flooding and the general insecurity of life and property are not enough, we have now added the dangerous controversy over Islamic Bank to the combustible cocktail.





This column has had cause to defend Sanusi Lamido Sanusi in the past, particularly against vested interests bent on frustrating his appointment. In a kleptocracy, it is impossible to be a decent Central Bank Governor without stepping on toes. Where the incumbent is driven by a missionary and messianic zeal, it is bound to be war in Babylon; a stridently agonistic venture in which no hostages are taken. Sanusi does not step on toes. He crushes toes, sending his adversaries hobbling about in excruciating pains.

But toes can be crushed without gleefully counting the remaining for the owners. This is where Sanusi’s personal comportment becomes a problem. In the past, we have had cause to caution Sanusi against a resort to excessive histrionics and grandstanding in the course of what is otherwise a honorable and noble mission. Hell-raising and hysteria-mongering are incompatible with regulatory banking at its most rarified level. It is not for nothing that bankers are seen and perceived to be traditionally conservative; always soberly besuited and evincing a dour impassivity of outlook. Like pilots even scary turbulence, they must project a becalming mien even while taking out of the ordinary decisions.

It does seem as if Sanusi is sometimes more driven by media melee and attention-seeking than actual results; more forsworn to giddy and gaudy showmanship than real substance. The catalogue of political indiscretions in a delicately poised nation prone to centrifugal forces is truly amazing. In an attempt to reform and sanitize the banking sector, Sanusi stands the risk of fatally endangering himself and the country by his hubris. If anybody would be pleased by those prospects, it is those who have turned banking in Nigeria to a vastly criminal enterprise.

The problem is not Islamic Banking. The most terrible thing about the advent of Islamic Banking is the timing. Coming at a time of dangerous polarization of the nation along religious and ethnic lines, it has now added a frenzied volatility and incendiary prospects to an already combustible situation. Suddenly, it is either you are an obliging Muslim fanatic or an objecting Christian fundamentalist without a pan-Nigerian middle ground, and without a thought for millions of Nigerians who still worship at the shrine of their ancestral deities. There are legions stoking the fire either out of criminal mischief or mischievous ignorance.

The most elementary factor ignored by proponents and opponents of Islamic Banking alike is the fact that its ideal habitat is a Sharia-compliant society. Without the teachings of the Koran and the Hadith to enforce its theological injunctions, Islamic Banking is a fish out of water. Its hatred of Riba or interest banking, its preference for profit-sharing, its aversion for speculative gambling based on economic gaming and cut-throat competition can only flourish in an Islamic theocracy. This is why in modern times, Islamic Banking is always a private and autonomous initiative stripped of state intervention.

In the dense fog of controversy perhaps the most perceptive observation came from the Daily Trust columnist, Adamu Adamu, who noted that there was always a huge gap, a telling disconnect, between the "theological erudition" of those learned in itjihad and the actual practice of Islamic Banking. In other words, theory is always trumped by grim and grimy reality. But as it is usually the case in these matters, Adamu’s own moment of intellectual insight is accompanied by ideological blindness since he believes that this fundamental contradiction can be overcome as soon as the practice of Islamic Banking catches up with its theoretical foundation. In order to understand what is going on, we need to go back to history itself.

In its classical epoch, that is between the eighth and twelfth centuries when Islam was at its golden age, Islamic Banking flourished in its territories. But it was at best a rudimentary form of capitalism articulated to feudalism which was the dominant mode of production. The Holy Prophet himself was known to be a prosperous merchant. Our own Kano became one of the hubs of a transcontinental caravan trade which stretched from the Middle East to the African Savannah. At this point in history, Kano might have been better developed than most European cities and certainly more advance than the primitive homesteads that dotted in England.

This was early globalization at its most glorious stage. Given the realities of the time and the dialectic of history itself, it was how far Islamic capitalism could take the world. Being people of the desert without much seafaring ability and more interested in religious conquest than in economic subjugation, the early Islamic expansionists could not have carried capitalist civilization to its next stage. Their very strength had become a weakness and it was left to other societies and human groups to push things forward.

It ought to have been the Chinese, but there is no point in engaging in counterfactual history. By the end of the tenth century, China was arguably the most advance human society. With the huge masts of their ocean going vessels unfurling like clouds in the sky—according to a historian—, the Chinese had been to Europe and America and back. Early artifacts at the Mombasa Museum in Kenya suggest that the Chinese had reached that part of Africa by the end of the seventh century. But it was at this point that China succumbed to a drastic decline due to a protracted power struggle between the mandarin class and the feudal lords.

But events moved fast elsewhere. Portugal which had become the first modern nation-state had begun sending ships to the orient bringing back goodies, particularly silk and fabrics, which enabled the Europeans to clad themselves decently for the first time in modern history. Spain which had expelled its Moorish overlords rapidly developed into a military and naval power. Holland which had been a Spanish colony quickly supplanted Spain as an economic power within sixty years of liberation. Before it was acquired by force and blackmail, New York was known as New Amsterdam.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the entire world had come under the orbit and logic of western capitalist civilization. This was the first phase of modern globalization in full bloom. Driven by human greed and fuelled by the logic of market expansion, the west stamped its badge of modernity on the rest of the world with dire consequences. All the way from California, Commodore Perry’s submarine had surfaced on Japanese shores threatening fire and brimstone. The British had forced China to open up the opium trade triggering what is known as the Boxers’ Uprising. Africa had been overrun militarily and economically subjugated, its vast populace forced abroad as slave labourers. Much earlier, the Spanish Conquistadores had trashed the ancient Inca civilization. In less than five hundred years, the entire ancient world had been smashed up and reconfigured.

If the ancient world was forced to disappear as a result of these epochal upheavals and the modern world conjured into existence, there was a stiff price to pay. The modern world has witnessed misery and suffering and man’s inhumanity to man on a scale hitherto unknown to history. From the mines of Potosi in Latin America to the slave plantations of America, the cruelty has been abysmal. It has produced a rash of fierce resistance ranging from the political to the religious and the ideological.

The resurgence of Islamic Banking in the early twentieth century must be seen as one of the countervailing measures against the harmful effluence of modern capitalism. It speaks to the radically humane nature of early Islam and its original quest for a just and humane social order. But it is like locking the stable after the horse has bolted. Capitalism can no longer be reined in by the mere abolition of profit and uxury.

It is noteworthy that despite its best efforts, Islamic Banking accounts for less than one percent of total global funds. It has often had to move its own funds to higher interest paying financial institutions in order to lend interest free. And there are those who have charged that it merely disguises interests by a resort to arcane logical and mathematical legerdemain. It is a reenactment of the old argument between the Arabs and their Jewish cousins. The Jews seem to have won the argument. The archetypal villain and master of uxorious lending is famously captured for posterity by William Shakespeare in the classic, The Merchant of Venice. There is a Shylock in everybody.




Let us by all means have Islamic Banking in Nigeria. But let the state steer clear of its operation. And let it not be done in a way and manner that threatens the entire system. Freedom of association is after all one of the fruits of liberal democracy. If Islamic Banking could benefit from the gains of the struggle against medieval tyranny despite its own origins in a theocratic order, the historic wager is won and lost.

And Yomi Odunuga

If there is anything that fascinates one about the popular social network site, Facebook, it is the divergent views that greet one’s occasional posting on national issues. It is interesting reading the comments posted by ‘friends’ including the logic and illogic. Sometimes, one gets fireworks where contributors attempt to puncture one another’s postings. Sometimes, one’s page gets plastered with empty bombast and meaningless patter. And, at other times, one gets inspired by the distillation of ideas and free thoughts that the various contributors bring to bear on a particular subject. Last week, this writer attempted to reawaken that spirit by sharing some thoughts on the personal encounters with some folks in London. If one must confess, the postings were meant to ignite a discourse that would, as expected, form a fulcrum of today’s piece——away from the sickening repetitiveness of the senseless bombings, callous killings and the crying incompetence on display by the authorities back home in Nigeria.

The first posting on July 17 relates to the moaning of an Asian cab driver on the failure of governance in his country. It read thus: “A cab driver, an Asian, who drove me from Debenhams to Oxford Circus in Central London, lambasted his country’s leadership for being corrupt and inept! He said roads back at home are death traps unlike the glitzy roads in United Kingdom. He spoke of bitter politics and crying poverty. As he went on whining, I kept a straight face murmuring ‘oohs and aahs’ and silently thinking: Could this man be talking about Nigeria? I just wonder.”

The second posting, meant to aggregate opinion on another germane issue of national importance, has to do with the plight of our citizens who are, for one reason or the other, stranded in Europe and are daily toying with the unlikely idea of packing it all up and coming back home. But, for some reason or the other, most of them have not been able to do just that. The posting read: “Everybody wants to go to Heaven, nobody wants to die. Practically all the Nigerians I have met talk about coming back home because things are getting tougher and tougher by the day here. Yet, none is thinking of taking that leap of fate soon. Why?”

You may say these are unserious postings at a time when Nigeria is enmeshed in deep crisis. But, after going through the engaging discourse and revelations made by those tagged on the page, this writer came to the painful reality that, to move up, the country needs to shake off the lethargy that has led to its stunted growth. The truth does hurt but one can hardly fault Achilleus Ucheagbu’s contribution that the Asian cab driver could as well be talking about Africa’s crying giant where the Benin-Ore road has taken more lives than the dreaded HIV/AIDS pandemic; where the Lagos-Ibadan road is sucking innocent blood daily and many other major roads are begging for attention as the authorities ‘corner’ the funds appropriated for renovation yearly. The Asian driver could as well be talking of Nigeria where politicians enrich themselves when poverty walks on four legs and the few lucky citizens run to the end of the world, in search of the proverbial Golden Fleece. Their stories have a striking resemblance with that of the Asian man who ran to Europe to eke a living while, at the same time, cursing the day he was born among the community of thieving leaders. Or is that not the Nigerian story?

Perhaps, no one could have succinctly answered the question better than Edward Otokhine, who wrote that the picture painted by the Asian “is a perfect picture of Nigeria, our dear country. I have this strange feeling that the country he spoke so gravely of might still be better off than our dear Nigeria. As it stands today, our dear country is bedeviled by multiplicity of problems like Boko Haram up north, struggle for resource control in the South-South and minimum wage palaver, bad roads, moribund energy sector; and the list is endless. Any hope in sight?

Now, who will answer that question? How do you place hope in a governance system which appears to be failing by the day? This is not just about the distraction that has been recently introduced into the polity with President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan’s latest fantasy called single term bill. It could as well be called tenure elongation bill. In any case, that’s what you get when you have leaders who believe in ruling by the whim and pandering to the occasional power surge in their brain wave. Jonathan’s latest fancy is nothing but a poisoned chalice. Even if one concedes to him the decision not to benefit from the proposed law of a longer tenure for the president and governors, can one vouch that some serving governors who would be rounding off their second tenure in 2015 will not take advantage of the new law to perpetuate themselves in office? Is the president’s proposition the best way of curbing corruption and the despicable dirty politicking during party primaries? What gives Jonathan the assurance that his successor will not influence the National Assembly to change the law to two terms of six years to suit his or her whim?

But then, that is a digression. In spite of the ‘tougher’ conditions that our citizens in the UK and elsewhere are being made to live with, coming home is not such a tantalising option after all. As one contributor puts it, home is not any better. The sad part is that those that ought to make the difference do travel to these countries to luxuriate with their stolen wealth. Hardly did it ever occur to them that, with a little commitment, they could transform their community and halt the brutish living that has become commonplace. Contrary to the thinking of President Jonathan, it shouldn’t take eternity to discover highly focused Nigerians who are determined to leave their footprints in the sands of time. How many years did it take Lagosians to realise that Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola meant business? How did former Governor Danjuma Goje come into public consciousness as the man that transformed Gombe State? Why is it easy to condemn the politics of Governor Godswill Akpabio but not his groundbreaking achievements in Akwa Ibom State? Where there is a will, there is always a way. The tragedy of our story today lies in the fact that our public institutions are in the firm grip of persons who are bereft of ideas about how to make them work and have maximum effect. Examples of these failed public institutions are too numerous to mention on this page. It is an open secret.

And so, rather than dissipate energy on elongating the tenure of the president, governors and lawmakers, Jonathan should focus on his electoral promises to provide jobs, improve the economy, ensure the generation of electricity, curb leakages and reduce corruption to the bearest minimum. He should find another means of wiping out the charlatans and deadwoods in the corridors of power without opening another window of opportunity for them to continue with the crying incompetence more than necessary. In any case, if elections are truly free and fair, the power to remove a non-performing president, governor or lawmaker should solely lie with the electorate. Six or seven-year tenure, in one’s candid opinion, is just too long to accommodate the shenanigans and taunts of an incompetent leader. It is as simple as that!

It is quite easy to challenge Nigerians struggling to survive in other countries to come home and contribute their quota to nationhood. But wouldn’t that be tantamount to jumping from the frying pan into a blazing ball of coal fire? Is the pasture greener here for many of us? Is Nigeria today worth calling a home where there is equity, justice and peace?

Justifying why Nigerians suffering abroad should think twice before boarding the plane home, Oluwasegun Simeon Osho, a returnee, posted these thought-provoking message: “A HOME is a ‘geographical’ location where a man/woman could have a mental or emotional refuge or comfort. A HOME is where the heart is. To be honest with ourselves, can anyone call this present Nigeria of Boko Haram a HOME? Where over 70% able-bodied youths are unemployed? Where you spend N1, 000 a day to buy fuel for your generator? Where N18, 000 monthly minimum wage is demanding for a national strike? Where the better part of your day is being spent in traffic? Is the present Nigeria worthy of a place to seek for refuge or comfort? I advise anyone thinking of returning to Nigeria to do a serious thinking o!”

One needs not go into the vexatious bashing that Osho’s comment has attracted by ‘patriotic’ home-grown Nigerians. But it is just as well to note that no one has faulted him on the frightening statistics he reeled out to buttress his point. No one has tabled any convincing argument to shut him up; no one has given the leadership a pat on the back for their efforts at setting Nigeria on the right path; no one has been able to explain why we keep nursing the same ailment many years after other countries have moved on to tackle more difficult challenges; no one has been able to justify why, after over 50 years as an independent nation, Nigeria continues to slide in infrastructural decay; and no one has been able to explain why Nigeria is trapped in this morass of movement without motion! All we do is look up to tomorrow and with fervent prayer, hope that another bungler will not take over the mantle of leadership. Hope, that’s all that we cling unto in this season of hopelessness. Wither Nigeria?

Didn't really like this Omatseye piece. Sort of a disjointed and odd writeup.

Hahahahha this is propaganda at best!!!

So wait, he started out by criticizing Sanusi first to get the attention of critics alike then he went ahead to fault Christian leaders all through lol!!!

It's all good though at least he is doing something (all it takes for evil to win is for good people to do nothing)

The idea of non interest banking is not an islamic creation, why insert it into our system with Islamic description?

I don't believe in writing articles, I believe in open debates in public and on TV, radio, etc,

Usury is a sin in Christianity but the fact that Christians are not supporting Islamic banking doesn't mean they support "worldly" banks; it just means they know to put religion out of the way of a secular nation, And because Rome supported Islamic banking which is in line with catholic ideologies, other Xtians who ain't catholic are suppose to reason with Rome?

Seriously, if you are going to accuse people of being bias, try not to be, Being Xtian doesn't mean you won't be bias against Xtians so trying to point out the writer is a Xtians is pointless,

Whoever the writer is is fully bias and for someone like to be that bias, it mean they have interest their winning argument,

olawalebab:

When I first heard of the issue of Islamic banking, I thought the words were misplaced. So I said Sanusi was merely referring to interest-free banking. In my reckoning, it was as much an Islamic thing as it was a Christian thing. The hoopla was therefore unnecessary.

But I had to look deeper. The fray intensified as nerves frayed across pious lines. The CBN boss, the boisterous and diminutive Sanusi, would not miss out on the theatre. If Sanusi does not meet with theatre, he would have to invent it. He loves the fight. He dares his opponents. Coming from a pedigree both colourful and austere, he wants to make a show in pursuit of old-fashioned ideas.

So, ancient and modern meet in the small man who has a lot of plunk and thunder. We should not forget that this man’s first love is not to be a CBN boss, however he seems to relish it. He wants to be the emir of Kano. That can come from a sense of revenge. His family lost out in the royal battle decades ago, and he feels a historic challenge to retrieve it. He would rather be a family hero than a national icon. Rather he has become celebrity as irritant.

So it is not surprising that he talks as though from a throne. He deploys poise, articulation, defiance, authority, a certain royal energy quite out of place with the aplomb persona of a central bank top shot. But Nigeria is a country where this sort can blossom. When Alan Greenspan shook the system in his day, it was on the quiet side. A Sanusi in America would mean a sort of professional suicide. It is only a man of Sanusi’s background though that can fell hefty bankers, play hero absent-mindedly and contradict himself and get away with it. He wants to cleanse the banks and later confesses cleansing the banks would not cleanse the economy. He is a contradiction of hubris in humility and humility in hubris. He abides the opposites. He wants to be at once regal and messianic, a revolutionary at war with himself.

So it is with Islamic banking. He explains the issue of Islamic banking as though it is only an economic issue. He does not mind riling the Christians. He does not care to reach out to them. He just wants to do his job.

Then you saw unrestrained goons like Datti Ahmed calling for war and another mullah with the Bible in Oritsejafor boasting as though we are in the years of The Crusades when Christians battled Muslims. In the rough-and-tumble of the debate, it is obvious no side is reasoning, and to use the cliché, we have a storm in a tea cup.

If you read the Bible well, you would realise that Christianity has nothing against the principle of Islamic banking. Usury in the Bible is sin. It is also sin in the Koran. So, it seems to me that the Oritsejafors of this world are opposing Islamic banking because they call it Islamic banking and because the bank would have a board of Sharia clerics to ensure the bank is faithful to its ideals. By opposing Islamic banking, they are supporting interests, the sin of capitalism. It is the supreme irony of clerics trying to go to war in defence of the worldly system. Friendship with the world, warns Paul in the Bible, is enmity with God.

Christendom did not go the way of the so-called modern banking until the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, which at the end was neither holy nor Roman, according to historians. What emerged at the fall of Catholicism was what Max Weber designated as the spirit of capitalism. But that spirit came not from infidels but from Christians. A group of Christians called Calvinists redefined the attitude of the faithful and consequently the world and history. As Weber, a sociologist, explained it, the Calvinists wanted to turn the kind of devotion they had for God to the world. They defined this in terms of work.

It was this group that laid the foundation for the modern view of work and profit, the contempt for indolence, the calculation of time as money, the proliferation of the professions, the scientific view of things with the masters of the Renaissance. A critical turn of mind overtook us, and the god of mammon started to compete feverishly with that of God. They could have heard what Jesus said: make unto yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness… Some scholars said Jesus encouraged dishonesty. We know the parable of the unjust servant, and the fact that he was unjust told the story. Jesus did not call for interest. Nowhere in the scriptures does so.

Banking was a story of Christians who dumped strict Christian principles in favour of profit. Americans are at bottom Calvinists. They are puritans in faith and puritans in business. They pursue faith and profit with equal enthusiasm. That was why Max Weber said the spirit abandoned what was called enchantment, a world peopled by only spirits. They became disenchanted and followed not only the spirit of God but also the spirit of capitalism.

What is called Islamic finance only calls for a strict adherence to a different sort of capitalism. It is wrong to deny Islamic finance the description of capitalism. The Muslim world wants capitalism in its own way. It calls for what it calls profit sharing. Rather than give a loan to a man to buy cars and charge for interest, it would buy the car at above the market value and sell it to the customer. The buyer will decide whether the profit is what he or she can live with. There will be a Sharia council to watch operations, but there is nothing wrong with that. If Christians are so worried about that, then they should not patronise the banks. The bank is not being imposed on everybody. If you decide not to use the bank, then go to other banks.

It is one of the fastest growing institutions in the world of commerce, and it is flourishing in Europe and the United States. It is better than what we have today when banks are lazy and charge astronomical interests for loans that help nobody but themselves. About 250 mutual funds and major banks have some form of Islamic banking to those who want it. Islamic banking is collaborative banking, and the customer takes part in negotiating terms and shares profits with the bank.

What the world witnessed in the past few years with shylock CEOs has drawn quite a few people to the Islamic alternative. Even the Vatican has argued that “the principle of Islamic finance may represent a possible cure for ailing markets.” This is the Catholic Church.

I wonder if many who oppose this brand of banking understand what it means. As I noted earlier, it has to do with the context of Sanusi’s rhetoric. It ought to be explained not only as an economic venture by a competing deity, but a practical way to do business. Capitalism grew out of the word laissez faire, which implies that others are free to make profit. Let a thousand traders bloom.

This is not the time to ratchet up rhetoric over religion, especially in these days of rampaging Boko Haram partisans. Rather than destroy Islamic banking, let us see how we can make it work.

I have since stop commenting on the issue of islamic banking so i simply say 'no comment'