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Comment by diziet | Hacker News Reader

One important thing to know is that in islamic banking, interest or anything that exploits time value of money is considered usury, and is haraam (sinful). There exists a whole institution of islamic banking compliant with shariah law.

From gift giving for usage of money such as hibah to good will repayment of debt such as qardul hassan where the debtor may repay more than the principal amount, islamic banking seeks to avoid interest (riba).

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It used to be this way with/amoung Christians (in the middle ages). But non-Christians could lend to Christians. That meant Jews were able to lend to Christians.

People often did 'hacks' against it, such as using pawn shops. Many cities in Europe have a "Lombard Street" based on this ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lombard_banking )

So San Francisco is not the only city with a remarkably crooked Lombard Street?

I wonder if that is the source of the street's name...

Unlikely. San Francisco is a young city (by european standards), and is younger than when there was Lombard Banks. It's more likely that when people were naming streets they just picked a nice name (or a familiar name), rather than naming it after the local Lombard Bank that was there.

It's hard for me to escape the feeling that Islamic banking replaces usury with hypocrisy, but I guess high-context Cultures could probably make the same argument in reverse.

Not sure that it is very different from Christianity and many other religions who banned charging interest, but then changed their minds/their definition of usury. The wikipedia page makes an interesting read:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury

Where's the hypocrisy in that? Perhaps I'm just being dense, but I fail to see the connection.

When paying a gift instead of interest, is the "gift" obligatory by any chance? Is it the same thing under a different name?

Islam forbids interest of all kinds. So if you are taking a gift in lieu of interest, that would be forbidden as well. Of course not everyone follows the rule to the letter but that doesn't change the fact that the rule exists and there are people who take it seriously.

For a real laugh, check out Shabbat elevators or the eruv:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabbat_elevator

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eruv

I don't think it's appropriate to make fun of somebody else's culture "for a real laugh," but these links were interesting anyway. So, thank you.

It's perfectly appropriate, provided you're not Jewish.

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