Ali 'Imran · Madani · ayah 130 of 200

Ali 'Imran 3:130

يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ لَا تَأْكُلُوا۟ ٱلرِّبَوٰٓا۟ أَضْعَـٰفًا مُّضَـٰعَفَةً ۖ وَٱتَّقُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ لَعَلَّكُمْ تُفْلِحُونَ

“O you who have believed, do not consume usury, doubled and multiplied, but fear Allāh that you may be successful.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Believers are told not to eat the increase that doubles and doubles again, and to guard themselves, so that something may last.

A reflection

Will you pay, or will you increase?

The commentaries preserve the exact sentence that was said at the door. A man owed a hundred, the term fell due, and the lender asked him one question. Will you pay, or will you increase? If he could not pay, the hundred became two hundred and the clock was reset. Next year, if he still could not pay, four hundred. The sources describe it going round and round like that.

With livestock it was done by age. A debt owed as a young she-camel became one a year older at each term. Then older again, through every stage the Arabs had a name for. A man's debt aged faster than the man did.

One commentary puts the effect in a single line. A trifling sum would end up swallowing the debtor's entire wealth.

Here is the heart of it, and it is worth saying slowly. In that arrangement the debtor's inability to pay is the lender's profit. The worse his week goes, the better the lender's year. Nothing else in ordinary trade works like that.

A modern version is easy to find. A man borrows to replace a washing machine and misses one payment during a cut in hours. Fourteen months later he owes several times what he took. He is not idle. He has simply discovered that in this arrangement bad luck is a billable event.

The word used for the practice is not a neutral one either. Its root means rising: raised ground, a hill, the earth swelling when rain reaches it, a child growing up. The Arabs heard growth in it. The ayah attaches that growth to a verb of consumption, and names the whole thing twice over as a doubling.

The detail of which arrangements today fall under the word is a matter the jurists work through, and they differ. The pattern the ayah names is not hard to recognise.

The full entry has 5 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.