Department of Humanities and Social Sciences presents a seminar on
Islamic finance is today a US$2 trillion global industry. Yet there is no comparable Christian-finance industry, Hindu-finance industry, or so on. Why not? The simple answer is that Islam bans interest while other religions do not. Yet 500 years ago, other religions – especially the Abrahamic faiths – also had very intense bans on interest. This talk will explore why those other bans disappeared. I argue that the survival of the interest ban depends on the survival of religious jurists, such as thefuqahāʾ or shariah scholars in Islam and canonists in Christianity. Religious jurists maintained their social importance in Islam into the current era and became the main ethical arbiters of Islamic finance. However, religious jurists’ importance declined dramatically in other faiths between the 16th century and the present. Exploring the reasons for this, the talk romps adventurously through over 2,000 years of religious attitudes toward money.
About the speaker
Ryan Calder is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Islamic Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He has an A.B. from Harvard and a doctorate from University of California, Berkeley. He is particularly interested in Islamic law, fiqh, and pious practice under conditions of contemporary capitalism and globalization.
