Reassessing ribā through qur’anic legal ethics: the moral limits of islamic finance under global capitalism
Keywords:
ribā, qur’anic legal ethics, islamic finance, maqāṣid al-sharī‘ah, global capitalismAbstract
This article reassesses ribā through Qur’anic legal ethics to examine the moral limits of Islamic finance under global capitalism. Although Islamic finance has expanded into a global industry and developed various Sharī‘ah-compliant instruments, its growing reliance on debt-based structures raises a critical question concerning whether formal avoidance of interest is sufficient to realize the Qur’anic objectives behind the prohibition of ribā. This study employs a qualitative conceptual design with a normative-interpretive approach, combining thematic Qur’anic exegesis, document analysis, and qualitative content analysis. The primary textual data consist of Qur’anic passages on ribā, especially Q. al-Baqarah 2:275–280, supported by classical legal-exegetical sources, maqāṣid al-sharī‘ah literature, institutional documents on Islamic finance, and critical political economy scholarship. The findings show that ribā is not merely a transactional prohibition against interest, but a Qur’anic legal-ethical category that critiques exploitation, unjust accumulation, debt dependency, and asymmetrical risk transfer. The study also finds that contemporary Islamic finance faces a persistent tension between formal Sharī‘ah compliance and substantive Qur’anic justice, particularly in relation to murābaḥah, tawarruq, and certain ṣukūk structures. The article contributes to Qur’anic legal studies and Islamic finance scholarship by proposing a substantive evaluative framework based on anti-ẓulm, risk-responsibility alignment, real economic linkage, debt compassion, and social distributive impact. It argues that Islamic finance can claim ethical distinctiveness only when it moves beyond interest avoidance toward the realization of Qur’anic justice in financial practice.
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