Indigenous traditions around the world oppose usury
By Sean Jobst, 6 January 2011
The spiritual reality of humanity is one, with the various traditions of the world being local expressions of a common primordial origin. “Every nation has a Messenger and when their Messenger comes everything is decided between them justly. They are not wronged.”(1) “Mankind! We created you from a male and female, and made you into peoples and tribes so that you might come to know each other.”(2)
It should be no surprise that usury was unknown throughout the world, as it came later and was not part of organic human nature. And in those places where it did become introduced, it was universally condemned. The current writer advises each person to research the culture and traditions of their ancestors, so they can better understand themselves and also truly “come to know each other” in mutual respect and understanding.
The current writer has done exactly this with his own ancestors, who include the Suevi-Alemanni and Celtiberian nations that inhabited what are now southern Germany and Spain. Among both nations, usury was entirely unknown until it came with the Roman conquest. The Suevi-Alemanni were actually the first Germanic tribe with whom the Romans came into contact, so that they now referred to all the various tribes with the term ‘Alemanni’. They were a people of oral traditions, rather than written records. Most of what is known about them comes from the Roman historian Tacitus, who writes:
“26. Lending money upon interest, and increasing it by usury, is unknown among them; and this ignorance more effectively prevents the practice than a prohibition would do.” (3)
Even while the Romans might have had more “glories” than my ancestors when measured by modern standards, their harmonious living with nature and the inherent justice of their social transactions earned the admiration of this Roman historian and senator. Tacitus lamented how usury had become a reality in Rome, where it was “an ancient evil, and a perpetual source of sedition and discord.” (4)
The Celtiberians were the inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula at the time of the Romans. They were the descendants of the indigenous pre-Indo-European inhabitants of the Peninsula, who intermarried with the Celts who migrated there around the 6th century BC. Usury was likewise unknown to them and when they came in contact with people who had usury, they condemned it as one of the sixteen branches of avarice, since they recognized it as “taking more than what is due by selling the time.” (5)
So it is that the current author was raised in the Catholic faith whose traditional prohibition of usury came from the New Testament and its condemnation by Prophet Jesus (peace be upon him). And then he made a conscious decision to become Muslim, a follower of the Qur’an that condemns usury in the most unyielding of terms and indeed declares war upon anyone who takes usury(6).
But that this prohibition of usury is actually part of his own ancestral traditions, from a time before either the New Testament or the Qur’an were revealed, demonstrates the natural disposition, or fitra. It perhaps also helps explain why his ancestral nations so eagerly accepted the unitarian message of Jesus (peace be upon him), like it spoke the same basic truths they already knew instinctively in their traditions.
Economic exploitation has always come on the backs of a political domination. As the rule of Rome became entangled with that of its usurious economy, so too did it stamp out indigenous opposition to usury throughout Europe, and this became law with the rise of the central banks in the last few centuries. Such a false monopoly has been guaranteed with actions of the State.
It is no accident that most of the leading financiers have come from Jewish backgrounds, a fact that is undeniable and will be examined further in an essay about usury among the ancient Hebrews. It’s an important example of how the creation of a false religious hierarchy (Pharisees), of accepting the primacy of the Talmud over the Torah, is so intricately connected to that of a false economic hierarchy. But usury is not endemic only to Jewish financiers, as we also condemn the Gentile financiers who overturned their own traditional prohibition of usury with the rise of the Calvinist ethics and the modern State, through the full weight of its laws which institutionalize usury and debt.
At the same time, usury was also unknown to indigenous peoples throughout the world, including nations throughout Africa, Australia(7), and Turtle Island, the continent known as “North America.”(8) But the reality is that usury only came to the shores of those lands with the conquests of imperialist nations, where the rule of the financial elites often became the determining factor behind imperialist endeavors, particularly in Britain and France. And so it is that now the international monetary system that stifles traditional cultures around the world, has as its cornerstone the taking of interest on loans.
A Word on Divine Revelation and the Oral Traditions
It is the current author’s conviction that the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) is the last in a long line of prophets who were sent to every nation, and the various indigenous traditions of the world were remnants of earlier prophetic teachings. The Qur’an is the last Revelation to all humankind, so that we may get closer to our Creator through it. As such it is the culmination of all the earlier revelations.
But there is a further reality, which is that the basis of Islam is a joining of the primordial oral tradition with the written word that arose through Divine Revelation, itself passed orally to those who received it. Each manifests itself according to the essential characteristics of a given people.
Islam is not belief alone, as it is inconceivable without actions. The Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) was given the Qur’an, as the balance and harmonization of the written and oral traditions. The Qur’an is to be lived, to become manifest in our actions, rather than simply being believed in as a book. When asked about the character of the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him), Sayydinat A’isha (may Allah be pleased with her) defined it as being the Qur’an.
The primordial way of life which is Islam was transmitted through actions, or amal, through the actions of the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) and his followers in Madina. The Qur’an explicitly condemns usury, and the practice of the people of Madina (Amal Ahl al-Madina) activates this Divine injunction with a monetary structure that is entirely at odds with that of usury and paper-money. It is that of the Gold Dinar, Silver Dirham and other real commodities as the only legitimate medium of exchange; of open markets and trade networks.
It is certainly no accident that, not being able to find the necessary justification in the established practice of Madina, the proponents of fiat money and banking in the Islamic world then resorted to manipulating the terminologies and a selective Pharisee-like reading of codified ahadith.
This is one again a clear example that the same forces who build false concentrations of wealth, likewise depend on a false religious hierarchy that is so often founded on stifling literalism, or the letter of the law killing its spirit, and a confusion of the end with the means, thus creating a false ideology that makes faith less accessible to people without accepting these clerics as intermediaries.
The Creator allows us to share in the bounties of earth, which are more than sufficient to sustain human life. However, at times many become greedy and want to take more than their due share; thus, they create monopolies which keep resources artificially scarce so they can have greater access to it than the rest of us. Such individuals accumulate more and more, until it reaches a point where their greed becomes institutionalized injustice and poverty.
True teachers and sages, foremost among them being the prophets, challenged not only the false religious hiearchies of their day, which were designed to monopolize spiritual knowledge and thus prevent the true spiritual wisdom from flowing to the people; but likewise they challenged the false economic systems whose very structure was contrary to the basic recognitions of faith in One God: our shared stewardship of the earth, our interconnectedness with the natural world, and our accountability to our fellow human beings.
The first aspect is against Shirk in relation to the Creator, while the second against shirk in relation to others from the creation, as it is shirking one’s accountability. Shirk is at the heart of economic injustices. Usury is the arrogant presumption of a creditor that they have some higher right to take more wealth from a debtor than they lend out. One of its manifestations is paper money, which likewise assumes the “creative” process can belong to someone other than the Creator. Tangible commodities exist within nature, while paper money “creates” wealth out of nothing.
NOTES:
(1) Qur’an, Sura Yunus, 10:47.
(2) Qur’an, Sura Al-Hujurat, 49:13.
(3) Tacitus, A Treatise on the Situation, Manners and Inhabitants of Germania, Part 3.
(4) Tacitus, Annals, vi, 16.
(5) Oliver Davies and Thomas O’Loughlin, Celtic Spirituality, Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1999, pp. 434-435.
(6) Qur’an, Sura Al-Baqara, 2:279.
(7) Aboriginal activist Denis Walker opposes usury and fractional banking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2DInuKclk4
(8) See my previous article, “The sovereign Lakota people declare their monetary freedom, institute silver-based currency,” http://kali-yuga.org/?p=1437