Research On Religion

Posts Tagged ‘usury’

Mark Koyama on the Economics of Jewish Expulsions

Prof. Mark Koyama of George Mason University explains why King Edward I expelled the Jews from England in July of 1290, giving them only three months to leave. Rather than focusing on anti-semitism or explanations based upon “greed,” Prof. Koyama shows how changes in feudal revenue collection during the 13th century led to a devaluation of the moneylending role that Jews played in the English economy and how expulsion represented a credible signal to the ever-rebellious lower nobility. He generalizes this explanation to help us understand why further expulsions of Jews occured in continental Europe in the subsequent centuries.

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Timur Kuran on Islamic Economics

Tags: banking, colonialism, India, interest, Islamic economics, Islamism, Jamaat-i Islami, murahaba, Muslim Brotherhood, oil revenues, Pakistan, profit sharing, riba, Sayyid Abul-Ala Mawdudi, Sayyid Qutb, umma, usury, venture capitalism, zakat

Timur Kuran (Duke University) discusses the movement known as Islamic economics, focusing on its origins, policy prescriptions, and consequences. We survey the thought of Sayyid Abul-Ala Mawdudi in the middle part of the 20th century, how his ideas spread and were institutionalized in the 1970s. Attention is paid specifically to Islamic banking, interest rates, and social welfare policies.

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Jared Rubin on Christian and Islamic Economic History

Tags: Abbasid Caliphate, Avner Greif, bill of exchanges, Bruxie's, Christianity, commerce, ecclesiastical courts, Europe, interest, Islam, legitimacy, Middle Ages, Middle East, religion and economics, religion and politics, Timur Kuran, usury

Did religion or church-state institutions have anything to do with the great economic divergence between Christian Europe and the Islamic world beginning in the 11th century? Prof. Jared Rubin of Chapman University reviews the economic history of these two civilizations, covers the dominant explanations for the observed divergence, and then discusses his own research showing that the relationship between religious and political authorities in each region of the world had a great deal to do with why Europe surged ahead economically. We focus primarily on the role of usury laws and financial interest, but Prof. Rubin gives us a taste of some of his work relating to the economic importance of the printing press.

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