“THOSE who gorge themselves on usury behave but as he might behave whom Satan has confounded with his touch; for they say, ‘Buying and selling is but a kind of usury’ — the while God has made buying and selling lawful and usury unlawful. … If, however, [the debtor] is in straitened circumstances, [grant him] a delay until a time of ease… .” — Surah Al-Baqarah, translation by Muhammad Asad.
Islamic banking started in Pakistan in 1979 and by 1985, commercial banks had stopped using the word ‘interest’ and used ‘mark-up’ instead. But with time it was apparent this kind of ‘Islamic’ banking wasn’t really Islamic and was just a name change from ‘interest’ to ‘mark-up’.
Pakistan’s modern Islamic banking began in 2002 when the first new fully Islamic bank started working. Since then Islamic banking has rapidly grown and now there are many Islamic banks. Islamic banks have turned out to be more profitable and there is considerable demand among Pakistanis to conduct their banking as prescribed by Islam.
Islamic banks now have Sharia boards that rule whether any banking facility is Sharia-compatible and the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) also has a Sharia advisory committee. We have also progressed from merely banking and now the government issues sukuks (long-term bonds backed by assets), we have Islamic leasing, called Ijara, and Islamic insurance, called Takaful.
We should examine how close to Quranic edicts is Islamic banking.
Next year as we celebrate the silver jubilee of the Islamic banking industry, we should examine how close to Quranic edicts is Islamic banking and whether it has grown closer to Islamic ideals.
A company can borrow from a secular commercial bank running finance for its working capital needs and long-term finance for its project financing needs. From the Islamic bank it will get Musharakah financing or Murabaha and Istisna financing. For an example of Istisna financing assume a company wants a loan for buying cotton. The bank will buy cotton for Rs10 million and sell it to the company for Rs11m with payment due in one year, or for Rs10.5m for payment due in six months. The bank doesn’t actually buy the cotton or sell it to the company. There is, however, paperwork to pretend this has taken place. The profit the bank makes depends entirely on the policy rate set by the SBP. When the policy rate is high, the bank’s profit is also equally high.
In Musharakah financing, the profit an Islamic bank charges the company also depends on the SBP’s policy rate. Typically, if the interest rate charged by commercial banks is two per cent above the SBP’s policy rate, the profit rate required by Islamic banks is also the same. If during the tenor of the loan the policy rate is increased by the SBP, the profit rate is increased by Islamic banks by a similar amount.
Just as commercial banks get their interest from the client whether the company is incurring a profit or a loss, Islamic banks also have no downside when a client loses money. Except for default or restructuring, no Islamic bank has ever made a loss because its borrower was losing money.
This then seems distinct from trade-based, risk-assuming lending that Islam envisions. For instance, a priori people would think that under Islamic banking’s Istisna financing if a company borrows money for buying 1,000 bales of cotton, it should return the money for a 1,000 bales of cotton, no matter what the new price of cotton is. If the value of cotton has increased, the bank will make a profit and if it has decreased, it will lose. But it will not get a fixed interest-based ‘profit’ no matter what happens to cotton prices.
Similarly, under Musharakah financing people would think that if the company is making profits, Islamic banks should also make a profit but not if it’s losing money. Otherwise, it is just like secular banks with Arabic names for loans.
With the current practice of Pakistani Islamic banks, the benefits of having trade-based Islamic banking are lost and banks don’t have an incentive to seek and give loans to companies that have great ideas and products. If the profit is fixed at exactly the rate of interest, like it is in commercial banks, then we lose the barkat of Islamic banking.
Up until last year, the SBP required banks to give a minimum interest to depositors. But Islamic banks objected that giving fixed profits to depositors would violate Islamic principles. However, the same Islamic banks are quite happy to charge their customers fixed profits based on the SBP’s policy rate. This dichotomy meant that customers of Islamic banks were getting less profits on their deposits than those given by commercial banks even as Islamic banks made more profits than others. Islamic banks were increasing people’s cost for being good Muslims. Even today, Islamic banks give lower profits to their depositors. This goes against the Islamic admonition of exploitation.
When a borrower is late in paying loans or interest/ profit, both Islamic and commercial banks charge you penal interest (which is against the ayat I quoted above) but whereas commercial banks keep this profit, Islamic banks give up that profit as charity.
One has to say that the difference between Islamic and commercial banks is more in nomenclature and less in substance. Bankers and economists know this but don’t say it in the hope that Islamic banks will eventually inch closer to true Islamic banking. However, it is unfortunate that even after decades this migration is non-existent. Perhaps it’s because ‘Islamic’ banks are more profitable and don’t want to exit a comfortable business model.
Islamic bankers give the example of eating beef to justify Islamic banks. They say if you eat non-zabiha beef it is wrong but the same beef is halal if slaughtered properly. The example is powerful but not applicable as Islam has not prohibited eating beef, it has just prescribed a way of slaughtering cattle. The prohibition of interest is more like the prohibition of drinking wine. It doesn’t matter whether it is consumed out of a teacup or a wineglass; the prohibition stays. Similarly, while trade is allowed in Islam, interest is prohibited even if you give it Arabic names.
We must endeavour to bring Islamic banking closer to the tenets of Islam — variable profits and risk sharing.
The writer is a former finance minister.
Published in Dawn, June 6th, 2026
