Shari’a prohibits riba al-nasi’ah (deferment riba) for the following reasons:
- Riba al-nasi’ah constitutes gains earned at the expense of others without exerting any efforts in a mutually beneficial trade. In other words, it is a zero-sum game, not a win-win mechanism.
- Riba al-nasi’ah is embedded with exploitation and oppression of the financially strapped people or the needy.
- This type of riba can restrict real economic transactions as it badly affects the circulation of money to productive activities.
This type of riba is clearly forbidden in Quran and Sunnah as it involves a loan (qardh) which entails the payment of additional benefits (benefits arising from deferment of one of the countervalues or underlyings).
