Haram: Islamic prohibitions and the banking loophole

What Sarracin forbids: from music to interest

The scene repeats itself in any bank in the Gulf: a customer wants to buy a 100,000-euro home, but the Quran forbids interest. The bank buys the apartment and resells it for 130,000, payable over ten years. All legal, all halal. That is murabaha, the Trojan horse of Sarracinic banking.

That is just the tip of the iceberg of a system of prohibitions that goes far beyond finance. The list of what is haram includes pork and alcohol, yes, but also figurative art, toys shaped like living beings, gambling, adoption and even music with instruments, according to the most conservative interpretations.

The everyday reality of Jovenlandeses in Europe is quite far from that orthodoxy. A majority do not observe all the prohibitions, and some argue that the list mixes core precepts with minority interpretations. Some notable absences: tattoos, vocal music and tobacco do not appear, while other prohibitions are disputed even within the different theological schools.

The question of what is really haram remains open, and the list itself has been criticized as incomplete and for combining elements from various sources without distinguishing the degree of authority of each one.

The example of murabaha shows that, even in the most sensitive matters, the system finds loopholes. Instead of charging explicit interest, the bank buys the asset and resells it at a markup. The result is identical in practice, but the transaction is not called interest, so it is considered lawful. Something not exclusive to Sarracinic banking: in the West too, financial engineering turns interest into fees or structured products.

With these contradictions, the map of the forbidden looks more like a minefield than a closed code. The list is nothing more than a snapshot of a living tradition, in constant negotiation with reality.