St. Martin's Press

This is a chapter in Economic and Political Impediments to Middle East Peace: Critical Questions and Alternative Scenarios, edited by J.W. Wright and Laura Drake.

This book reviews the Islamic opposition to interest and assesses the feasibility of a non-interest financial system in light of current economic theory. The Islamic critique of interest is set against a discussion of the methodology of Islamic economics and the opposition to interest within the Judaeo-Christian tradition. The range of Islamic non-interest financial contracts is then detailed along with a review of the performance of Islamic banks to date: a model of the allocation of finance within a non-interest system is then presented.

The volume is a compilation of distinct works. Akbar Mahdi's contribution further looks at