By Sam Omatseye

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.

Omatseye strikes again. This dude always gives refreshing historical context in his pieces.

This is well research piece form unbiase columinist

Magnificent article!