What is money and why is interest [riba] forbidden?

Money today is any good that functions as a medium of exchange that is socially and legally accepted in payment for goods and services and in settlement of debts. Money also serves as a standard of value for measuring the relative worth of different goods and services and as a store of value. One can say that money is a form of standardised certificate of debt. Person A gives person B any good and person B hands over to person A a standardised certificate of debt for this good, which person A can use in a defined economy.

In former times money had its own value. The standardized coins have been produced out of gold or silver, so that the money itself at the same time was a good itself. But today's money is no longer the same as real value. The papers in our hands have no own value. It is only a standardised certificate of debt and has its value only if there is someone to honour this money with any goods. Nevertheless, it is used as a good itself to get interest [riba].

Interest [riba] is another part of today's world economy. If someone is ready to lend his existing standardised certificate of debts - called money - to another person, this other person has to give back the lend money one defined day. But in addition to this lend money, he has to give back an additional money, which is called interest or "Riba" as Islamic term.

As we know, interest is forbidden in Islam. To prove how wrong and defect the system of "Riba" is, on can assume, what would happen, if someone living in the time of Prophet Muhammad, more than 1400 years ago, and had invested only one single Tuman with 5% interest. The result would be that his today progeny would posses nearly 5 Quadrilliarde (4,62401 x 1029) Tuman. This is a 5 with 29 zeros behind! And you can imagine that this is much more than today's existing money in Iran.

This corrupt system of "Riba" can only exist for some decades and needs afterwards a world war to start again by zero. Today we live in the era of such a crash. But this era gives us a good chance to understand, why the Salawat-System could work even without miracles. Therefore we need a short view into the recent existing government debts.

Adapted from the book: "Universality of the Mahdi's Mission" by: "Mahdawiat.com"