“I would like very much to see a dialogue developing with Islam about this question of what a just, a reasonable rate of interest might look like in the light of a religious ethic but this is work, reflection, very much in its infancy to put it mildly.”1

Dear Dr Williams,

We write to you from the city of Norwich in response to your desire to see a dialogue developing with Islam about the question of interest rates. However, before focusing our attention on the treacherous subject of usury, our position on which you might understand from previous communications, we must first draw your attention to certain matters pertaining to the nature and purpose of dialogue itself.

Dialogue presupposes that there are two parties, presumably with different points of view. That makes it a very challenging affair, the most everyday example of which is the relationship between men and women, particularly within the family. It is, of course, a truism to say that men and women see things very differently, and for one or the other to deny their own or the other’s very different view of existence is the end of dialogue and the beginning of some other process with some other purpose, whose consequences for the relationship between them will invariably turn out to be unjust or unbalanced.

The same considerations must apply to any potential dialogue between Islam and Christianity. If you expect from us some mirror image of yourself who will quickly absorb Christian values, but perhaps continue to wear the turban on ceremonial occasions, then we are the first to confirm, with regret, that your desire is eminently achievable as there is no end of Muslim scholars and clerics who are only too eager to respond to you, but just as regretfully, you will still not be holding a dialogue with Islam. How can that be?

The countless Christian movements and denominations make it impossible to generalise, but it is certainly the case that the Church of England has its roots in the age old institutions of priesthood and monasticism. Admission of this reality is fundamental to any proper understanding of your approach to this matter of dialogue. You yourself are a priest, that is, you are a professional religious functionary whose salary depends upon his place within the hierarchy of the Church; it is your livelihood. However, we do not have such a figure in the Islam of the sunna (practice) of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Nevertheless, as you yourself will already have discovered, there are indeed a considerable number of Muslim personalities who, to all intents and purposes, are priests; they are professional Muslims whose incomes, claims to legitimacy and public profiles depend largely upon their positions within, or affiliations to, various NGO’s, state bureaucracies or academic institutions, rather than any direct and authentic community mandate.

Moreover, you will also have found out that such people are more than pleased to be asked to enter into dialogue with a high-ranking priest from the world religion of Christianity such as yourself. Indeed, they have such an earnest desire to be invited to the party, that they are surprisingly easy to persuade of the need to compromise or even abandon certain key tenets of Islam, or to enter into a process, overt or otherwise, of Islamic reform. We daresay, a man of your experience and perspicacity will have quickly noted this tendency, since only that could explain why the people across the table from you so conveniently mirror your own form and image; they are simply too good to be true. Therefore, it is most unlikely that they could be considered authentic representatives of the Muslims or appropriate counterparts for the exchange you are seeking. Thus, whatever else it may be, this would not constitute a dialogue with Islam.

A dialogue with Islam will require that you seek out a genuine Muslim community in the first instance, as opposed to organisations, committees, self-appointed representatives or even your own preferred acquaintances within the Muslim fold. You must then seek direction as to those who are best placed to respond to you with regard to knowledge or expertise on the matter in question. Therefore, in seeking to open a dialogue with Islam on the question of interest, you are now confronted with two prior questions:

a) What is a genuine Muslim community?
b) Which of them is best placed to respond in terms of sound knowledge and expertise?

Our sincere advice to you is that if you have already begun your quest, you should go back and start over again with these questions. However, it would be beyond the purpose and the scope of this letter, and neither would it be appropriate, for us to offer you our own answers to these questions unsolicited.

Returning to the relationship between Muslims and Christians, as we understand it based upon the Qur’an, the final revelation from Allah, the Most High, the Creator of everything that is in the heavens and the earth, there are various commonalities between us. On this basis any dialogue with you on the matter of interest must begin with our pointing you towards what you have abandoned of the two most germane of our shared roots. Firstly, your abandonment of the pre-trinitarian monotheism that affirmed that God is One, Alone without partners, Unborn and Everlasting, without like and without offspring; this abandonment thereby opening the door to confusion and idolatry. Secondly, there is your abandonment of the strict prohibition against usury; thereby opening the door to death, starvation, suffering and oppression of epic proportions, leading to the brink of the very world crisis which has occasioned your recent forays into the unaccustomed sphere of banking. In your own recent words, “… while Islam still forbids the charging of interest, Christian leaders watered down their opposition to the practice centuries ago.”

You clearly understand that the Muslims have held out these long centuries against the charging or paying of any interest whatsoever, regarding it as usury. The truth is that we can find no way to get around it. Our Qur’ān, the sunnah of the Prophet (peace be upon him) and the entire weight of the Islamic legal tradition are so clear, that there is no doubt, and no room for doubt, that charging or paying interest on loans is absolutely forbidden, whether it is 245%, 18%, 4% or 0.01%.

Now, if that seems intransigent to you, we are also obliged to inform you that the difficulty with usury goes beyond the problem with interest. Before you will truly understand the extent to which this Islam with which you wish to enter into dialogue really does differ from Christianity in its perspective on modern finance, you will also need to grasp an even more challenging truth. You see, while ordinary Muslims and average scholars are clear on the point concerning interest, the more perspicacious of them have seen right to the core of the current financial order and have seen that the very nature of fiat currencies themselves amounts to the institution of a mechanism for the generation of usury compared with which the charging of even the most extortionate rates of interest simply pales into insignificance. Be prepared, therefore, to have to extend your terms of reference into what for you will be uncharted territory.

Now, if you are seriously interested in dialogue, you will be as interested in discovering the viewpoint of the other party and really understanding it, as you are in enabling them to appreciate your own viewpoint, because that is what dialogue is. Otherwise, it is a kind of monologue posing as a dialogue, a pseudo-dialogue. We would suggest that until you begin to see the very ‘other’ nature of Islam for what it really is, you will fail to apprehend that these differences are nothing less than God’s proof against you and a determined reminder to you, of what Christians chose to abandon of our common heritage centuries ago, rather than some slightly quaint variations on the Christianity and Judaism with which you are familiar. Until then, you will not have the slightest possibility of entering into a real and meaningful dialogue with us.

But then again, perhaps you ought to ask yourself in all sincerity whether you really want dialogue. We don’t need you to provide us with an answer to this question, but you ought to be honest with yourself at least, since the dialogues we conduct with our own hearts are often the most revealing and profitable of all. For us, it is satisfaction enough to know that we have done our best to deliver the advice contained in this letter.

For all the otherness of Islam, we do have some things in common that you might actually find comforting in this strange and dangerous age in which we live. For example, we really do believe in God, and by ‘we’ I do mean the perfectly average everyday Muslims right across the planet. That is something that is quite hard to grasp in this time, i.e. that more than a billion quite uncomplicated people in all sorts of walks of life really do believe in God, to such an extent that for a very significant proportion of them it actually makes a difference to how they live their lives, for example by their praying five times a day. That kind of ritual observance, as you know, within Christianity is something expected of certain professionals only: monks, nuns and priests.

Similarly, fasting an entire month from dawn to sunset of each day, abstaining from food, drink and sex. Surprisingly, larger numbers of people do this than even the substantial numbers who observe the ritual prayer five times a day. Not even your professionals feel particularly obliged to go to such lengths.

Or take, for example, the fact that the Muslims really do believe in Jesus, peace be upon him, with great sincerity, to such an extent that all Muslims will make a prayer for him when his name is mentioned. Of course, it is anathema to us to idolise him and as such we are in no doubt that your orthodox trinitarianism is a deviation that amounts to idolatry. Indeed, it often surprises people, but I suspect will not surprise someone as erudite as yourself, that Muslims believe in the virgin birth and the ascension of Jesus, peace be upon him – if not his crucifixion – doctrines which the majority of Christians have abandoned under the onslaught of doctrinal materialism, i.e. science.

The sorry truth, Dr Williams, is that your own constituency is greatly diminished, with many token believers even in the ranks of your own professional clergy, while other denominations continue to proliferate as they clutch at the remnants of Biblical faith. You surely must see that the overwhelming tide of materialism and humanism has had terrible consequences for the human being. The appalling twentieth century with its genocides, mass murders, global wars, gulags and extermination programmes and perhaps worst of all, the apogee of the economic, social, environmental and moral devastation of usury-capitalism, are all evidence of the complete failure of the humanist project and the complete failure of Christianity in the face of it all, not to mention its complicity.

This brings us back to your remarks which we quote at the opening of this letter. Your expression, “… a just, reasonable rate of interest” is, as far as the Muslims are concerned, an oxymoron whose awful perfection is unbelievably shocking. Therefore, you must be instantly suspicious of any Muslim who suggests otherwise. You must also understand once and for all that in Islam any amount of interest is usury, and that usury, with the sole exception of outright idolatry, is the source of the greatest societal injustice, immorality and oppression imaginable. Therefore, for the Muslims to agree to enter into discussion with you on a ‘just’ interest rate, is really to begin to submit, as you clearly already do, to the intolerant and inhumane humanist creed, that new secular religion which is so hostile to everything we hold dear. That this creed and the rapaciousness it promotes have brought us to the verge of a universal collapse and possible world war means that Christian leaders like yourself cannot afford to fail humanity yet again by falling into complicity with injustice; there is simply too much at stake.

Finally, if you do not find in what we have said very much by way of encouragement in your quest for a dialogue with Islam on the matter of interest, as a man of faith you may yet find there, along with other sincere Christians who may also read this letter, something to enrich the inevitable dialogue you will have with your own heart. It may also provoke that inner voice, which surely you will have heard from time to time, that longs to be rid of high office and its trappings (how apt a word!), the accumulated weight of centuries of uncertain theology and the crumbling edifice of never ending political compromise. The more sincere you are in your recognition of Islam and in your determination to engage with your estranged brothers, the Muslims, the more insistent that voice is likely to become and the more likely it is to summon you to the road that beckons you to your heart’s ultimate goal. You will certainly not be the first to have taken it, whether amongst the great or the obscure. May Allah guide you to it.

Hajj Abdassamad Clarke and Hajj Uthman Ibrahim-Morrison
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1 Archbishop of Canterbury: Greed has caused global financial crisis, By Martin Beckford, Religious Affairs Correspondent, 15 Oct 2008

2 Crisis! What Crisis?