A few months ago, Nigeria’s Central Bank Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, defended his pet project “Islamic Banking” before the House of Representatives.

During his speech he claimed to have attended a Catholic School and scored very high in Christian Religious Studies. By his own calculations he knew Bible enough to know that Non-Interest Banking (Islamic Banking) is what the Bible commanded.

Exodus 22:25, according to him, prohibits collection of interests, in effect, supports Islamic Banking. The passage he quoted reads thus,

“If you lend money to any of my people, who are poor among you, you should not be like a money lender to him; you shall not charge him interest” (NKJV).

I will add another scripture he did not refer to, “If one of your brethren becomes poor, and falls into poverty among you like a stranger or a sojourner; then you shall help him, that he may but fear your God, that your brother may live with you. You shall not lend him your money for usury …. Lev. 25:35-37 (NKJV).

Furthermore, in Deuteronomy ‘God Commands: “You shall not charge interest to your brother,  .Deut 23:19 NKJV.

Looking at these passages, one may begin to think that perhaps Sanusi is right when he claimed that the Bible forbids loans on interest. But a careful look at these Bible texts will reveal the following:

1.The loans were not meant for commercial purposes: that is, they were not loans granted  traders to set-up or expand businesses, but to help a person or   those who had fallen into poverty over that period of poverty.
2.That Israelites at the time of Moses were not into Banking and Finance as a business. The society was more of an agrarian society.
3.The passage in Exodus recognized that there were professional money lenders (probably in Egypt where Israel  came out from) only that the rich Jews did not treat the poor brothers the way a professional money lender would.

In the New Testament, after over 1000 years of being part of the ancient world of trade and commerce, the background has drastically changed for Israel.
Jesus gave a parable of a nobleman who gave out his money to his servants for business before embarking on a journey. That parable ends with the words of rebuke from the nobleman to one of the recipients of the money:

“You wicked and lazy servant …, you ought to have deposited my money with Bankers, and at my coming I would have received back my own with interest… Mt 25: 26,27 (NKJV).

     There were Bankers at Jesus’ time who saved and loaned money with interest. Jesus did not condemn that business.

       Back to Lamido Sanusi, the Central Bank Governor! He got it totally wrong when he tried to justify ‘Islamic Banking’ from the Bible. Even today as it was in Bible days, it is an offense for an individual to lend money to another individual on interest. Only Banks are allowed by law to do that.

Lamido Sanusi should look for support from somewhere else and not the Bible. I do not blame him, what he does not know is that Bible knowledge as a subject is far from knowing the Bible.

Anyway, apart from hypocrisy, why would anyone think that ‘Islamic Banking’ will be the solution to all our economic problems? If it is so, there are rich Muslims; they would have been lending their money to their poor brothers with no interest.

After all, who needs Federal Government Legislation and Central Bank’s support to obey God. They know it is not going to work, but probably they are hoping to find a place where money could be taking for free for reasons best known to them.

The problem of people like Lamido is that his brand of Religion seems to be confusing realities of 21st century with that of 15th century. Truth knows no creed nor religion, it is dynamic and yet unchangeable.

God is the God of 13th Century BC, 15th century AD, as well as the God of the 21st century.

One good thing may yet come out of all these brouhaha. Many well- meaning Nigerians are praying that may be even the talk of having ‘None Interest Banking‘ will pose enough challenge on our shylock blood -sucking banks who ought to take another look at their insatiable quest for excessive profit at the expense of genuine economic growth of this country and its people.