HEARTSCORE

Now we know people found that rather than just swapping goods

it was easier to use tokens for how much they were worth,

metal coins they used as money.

So they used gold and silver because they were rare

and could be made pure,

but some people would mix gold with cheaper metals

and pretend the coins were all gold,

so it was not as safe as they might have liked.

Nor was it safe to carry all your money around with you,

or even to leave it in your house.

But they realised that gold merchants used to keep their gold

in locked safes most of the time,

so they started to leave their gold with those merchants

to keep it safe,

and those merchants would give them a receipt

saying what they owed them.

Then, instead of using gold coins

people started to trade by using those receipts,

a money merchant's promise to pay back that gold,

and paper money was born.

Well, those people who stored the gold

became what we now know of as banks,

and the system spread around the world.

But coins in different parts of the world

could be different sizes,

and so have different values

and different names

in different languages,

and banks in different countries

still use those different names and values,

what we call different kinds of currency,

and the amount you get in one currency

for the amount you have in another

is called the rate of exchange.

But people can also promise to pay for something

even though they don't have any money to do so at the time.

They sometimes want something right away

and promise to pay for it in the future.

Perhaps they want to borrow money

to buy something that will help them make more money,

like a machine to make things,

or a car or van

so they can do business in different places.

But that involves risk

because things don't always work out as hoped and planned,

so lenders and borrowers needed a set of rules

that they each had to agree on.

This would usually mean that whoever borrowed the money

agreed to pay back a little bit more than they had borrowed,

to make it worth the lender's while,

and this extra was known as interest.

Now the original muslim way of lending and borrowing

was guided by the Messenger's Reading,

which meant that the person lending

shared in the risk being taken by the borrower,

and the interest charged

was always a fixed amount,

but other money lenders would demand that their lending be risk free,

giving them a claim on the borrowers goods

if they didn't repay the loan in time,

and with the interest charges they made

growing ever larger during any time that the loan was not repaid.

Muslims were not allowed to make these kinds of loans,

which were known by the arabic word "Riba"

but this kind of lending is the most common form of lending used by banks today,

with credit cards letting people buy what they want

before they have the money to pay for it,

and with interest charges rising all the time

that the money they have spent hasn't been repaid.

This can cause all sorts of problems for people,

who can often end up paying much more for things than they intended,

with most of what they pay being for the loan,

rather than the goods on which they spent the money.

And the rate of interest can make a huge difference

to the cost of goods bought on credit,

with some companies,

often known as "pay-day" lenders

offering short term loans to people

on extremely high rates of interest,

meaning that when someone finds they can't pay on time

the amount they owe can quickly grow

to a point where it is impossible for them to repay it,

so the amount they owe to the company

keeps getting bigger and bigger

while the borrower becomes more and more desperate.

It is to stop this kind of unfair lending

that muslims are told to avoid Riba.

If we do not want what we do not need,

and what we cannot afford,

but instead all try to share what we have

with those who have less,

God will take care of all our needs.

The creation is filled with more than enough

to satisfy everyone's needs,

but those who don't care about the needs of others,

only seeing what they want but don't have,

find that they are never satisfied.

It is the whispering of the tempter

that encourages greed,

but greed of its nature is impossible to satisfy.

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