Could the "viable economic alternative" that threatens the Western economic model be one that declares the collecting of interest to be illegal? That is the model Iran is now holding out to the world.
In 1979, Iran was established as an "Islamic Republic," designed to enforce the principles of the Koran not just morally or religiously but as a matter of state government policy. Afghanistan, which is also in the cross-hairs of the U.S. war machine, and Pakistan, which the U.S. is trying hard to control, are also Islamic Republics.
The economic principles of the Koran include Sharia banking, which forbids "usury." In the Koran, usury is defined as charging not just excess interest but any interest. That is also how the term was defined under Old English law until Protestant scholars redefined it in the seventeenth century, opening the Christian world to a form of economic advantage formerly available only to Jewish money lenders.
In Jewish scriptures, charging interest was forbidden between "brothers" but was allowed in dealings with "foreigners." (See, for example, Deuteronomy 23:19, "You must not make your brother pay interest," and 23:20, "You may make a foreigner pay interest, but your brother you must not make pay interest.") This point is raised here not to indict the Jewish people (who are not the "global bankers") but for its historical relevance in tracking the divergence of two religious systems.
Charging interest on loans has been accepted banking practice throughout the Judao-Christian world for so long that we don't think there is anything wrong with it today, but that hasn't always been true. The history of interest is detailed in an article in The World Guide Encyclopedia, which is published in Uruguay and has a Third World/Islamic slant. It states:
The practice of usury – lending money and accumulating interest on the loan – can be traced back 4,000 years. But it has always been despised, condemned, restricted or banned by moral, ethical, legal or religious entities....
"During the prophet Muhammad's lifetime, criticism of usury became established. This stance was reinforced by his teachings in the Qur'an, around 600 AD....
Judaism's criticisms of usury are rooted in several passages of the Old Testament in which charging interest is scorned, discouraged and prohibited.... [I]n Deuteronomy, [the ban] extends to all loans, excluding trade with foreigners. The word 'foreigner' is interpreted in general as 'enemy' and, armed with this text, Jews employed usury as a weapon, as other people's needs could be transformed into submission....
The prohibition of usury was adopted as a major campaign by the earliest Christian Church, following on from Jesus' expulsion of the money-lenders from the temple. . . . [T]he Catholic Church of the 4th century AD banned the clergy from charging interest, a rule that was later extended in the 5th century to the laity. . . . [A]round 1620, according to the theologian Ruston, 'usury passed from being an offense against public morality, which a Christian government was expected to suppress, to being a matter of private conscience, and a new generation of Christian moralists redefined usury as excessive interest'....
[I]t is interesting to contrast the clear moral mandate expressed through Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum (634-644 AD) about 'ravenous usury' as 'a demon condemned by the Church but practiced in a deceitful way by avaricious men,' with Pope John Paul II's encyclical Solicitude Rei Socialis (1987) which omits any explicit mention of usury, except for a vague reference to recognizing the Third World debt crisis.
This 'demon' governs current global relations, condemning most of the world population to living under the sign of debt: i.e., each person born in Latin America owes already $1,600 in foreign debt; each individual being conceived in Sub-Saharan Africa carries the burden of a $336 debt, for something that its ancestors have long ago paid-off. In 1980 the Southern countries' debt amounted to $567 billion; since then, they have paid $3,450 billion in interest and write-offs, six times the original amount. In spite of this, that debt had quadrupled by the year 2000, reaching $2,070 billion."9
Islamic scholars have been seeking to devise a global banking system that would serve as an alternative to the interest-based scheme that is in control of the world economy, and Iran has led the way in devising that model. Iran was able to escape the debt trap that captured other developing countries because it had its own oil. Few Islamic banks existed before Iran became an Islamic Republic in 1979, but the concept is now spreading globally.
With the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, the viable economic model that threatens the global dominance of the Western banking clique may no longer be Communism. It may be the specter of an Islamic banking system that would strip a private banking cartel of the compound interest scheme that is its most powerful economic weapon.
President Bush assured allies before his Mideast trip:
It's important for the people in the region to know that while all options remain on the table, that I believe we can solve this problem diplomatically, and the way to do that is to continue to isolate Iran in the international community.1
Isolate Iran from whom? Isolation is something that is done to prevent contagion. The contagion to be contained may be the creation of an Islamic State pursuing the principles of Sharia law, something that is now the rallying cry for many Muslims around the world.
