Finnish Muslims and interest-based loans – ideals and realities

Abstract In this article, we discuss the economic practices of Muslims in Finland, particularly attitudes towards interest-based loans. We are interested in the following questions: What are the financial practices regarding interest-based loans among Finnish Muslims? How do they perceive the lawfulness or prohibition of such loans? What factors (religious or other) influence the decision to take out interest-based loans? Does standard Islam play a role in the decision making? Our analysis is based on a survey of 143 respondents. The responses indicate that Finnish Muslims engage in a variety of practices and utilize different arguments to justify their practices towards interest-based loans. Normative Islamic texts such as fatwa literature have both prohibitive and permissive rulings on interest-based transactions. The aim is to investigate how and to what extent standard Islam influences and interacts with lived Islam. Our results show that whether a respondent had taken an interest-based loan did not appear to be linked to their economic situation. While the respondents’ economic situation was not associated with loan-taking, their religiosity was: a person who never prays is about 50 times more likely to have taken an interest-based loan than a person who prays daily.