Jadidist Economics: Early 20th Century Tatar Religious Reformers on Usury and Banks

Abstract

The article deals with three main approaches of Tatar religious reformers of the early 20th century to the problem of the Quranic usury ban. They all believed of the traditional scholastic Muslim doctrines as being outdated and hampering the economic development of the community. They offered their own modern interpretations on the basis of various methods of reading the sacred texts. Their solutions varied from the restriction of the ban to accepting the only particular kind of usurious transactions, existed in pre-Islamic Arabia; from legalization of the common credit and banking institutions to the ideas of creating a Muslim bank that accumulates the capitals of the entire community.