Contraction and Convergence Religious

RIBA or USURY [the lending of money for profit] is at the heart of the twin crises of finance and climate.

The Quran has some forthright views on RIBA. It states: "O you who believe! fear Allah and give up what remains of your demand for interest, if you are indeed believers. If you do it not, take notice of war from Allah and His Messenger: but if you repent you shall have your capital sums; deal not unjustly and ye shall not be dealt with unjustly." (Baqara, 2:278-279).[16]

In addressing the matter of RIBA this way, the Quran appears to say that attempting to force the repayment of unrepayable debts created in this way invokes 'war from Allah and his Messenger.' This is a conflict that goes all the way back through history. It is one of the reasons that Jesus threw the money-lenders out of the temple.

RIBA-based Banks like all Western Banks, want to keep their base in the City-of-London [CoL] as CoL is at the centre of a global web of tax havens all over what was the British Empire [vide 'Treasure Islands' - Nicholas Shaxson]. The Banks know and lobby-to-ensure that the UK mustn't ever adopt the Euro and join 'Euro-zone' as, if the UK did this, all flight-capital through these tax-havens webbed off CoL in £ would be in an immediate structural crisis with unresolvable accountability issues.

However, because of the global financial crisis, one can spculate that the UK appears to face impossible choices now.

The UK: -

Can join the Euro-Zone to keep a seat at the top-table and help EZ not to collapse - but this would mean abandoning GBP in favour of adopting Euro and UK/CoL don't want that;
Can continue to refuse to join EZ and lose seat at the table where 'Eurobonds' now touted are step towards the European fiscal and political union neither of which UK/CoL want either;
Can watch watch the EZ as a whole implode [whether as a member or not] because EZ country deficits that cannot be 'restructured' effectively collapse the currency;
Can similarly watch the USD lose reserve-currency status and the US Economy AAA rating because their deficit can't be refinanced
Will prgressively face the loss of GBP value, relative to climbing Chinese Remnimbi, as some version of points [1] and [2] above plays out
Will lose traffic for GBP/USD capital flight to GBP/USD tax-havens with loss of UK/CoL post-colonial dominance . . .

Who can say? But things don't look good. And the War on Terror is made against those who War on the Error of RIBA.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~