Towards A Unified Zakat System

and Muslim economists must face the difficulty of findingways of dealing with a world-wide financial and bankingsystem which is predominantly based on interest.3.5.1 Definition of riba and reasons for itsprohibition in Islamic economicsIn Arabic, the noun riba is derived from the verb raba (toincrease).Thus, it means any increase, addition or growth.In Shariah, however, riba has the special meaning of theexcess paid by the borrower to the lender for a loan to theextent of its maturity (Afzal-Ur-Rahman, 1980). Theunanimous view of Muslim jurists is that riba has the samemeaning as interest. Neinhaus (1986) defined riba as apositive predetermined return or guaranteed repayment oncapital, while Cooper (1981) maintains that riba literallymeans to increase.The prohibition of riba, as a practice, is not unique toIslam. It was prohibited by the early Christians, as it wasby the Jews and by Graeco-Roman traditions (Islahi, 1988;Orr, 1989). Great Greek philosophers such as Plato andAristotle stated that interest was contrary to the natureof things and was considered, by them, as bad as homicide(Cooper, 1981). Hammurabi (around 2000 BC) limited interest75