Al Baqarah

يَمْحَقُ اللّهُ الْرِّبَا وَيُرْبِي الصَّدَقَاتِ وَاللّهُ لاَ يُحِبُّ كُلَّ كَفَّارٍ أَثِيمٍ

276. "Allah effaces usury and He causes charities to flourish, and Allah does not love any ungrateful sinner."

The Arabic word /mahq/ means 'effacement, obliteration, erasure', and the term /muhaq/, from the same root, is used for the moon when it disappears by the nights at the end of the lunar month. Then the term /riba/ 'usury interest', with the sense of gradual increase, is applied in the opposite correspondence. This verse admonishes that though a usurer takes interest from others in order to compile wealth, Allah seizes the abundance and good results that he expects from the gross of wealth gained through usury. The property resulted from usury may not necessarily be obliterated itself, but the goals, which are considered from compiling wealth, fail.

In the course of usury, there is no love, happiness, and security, so that many a rich person can gain no sort of comfort, peace, or amiability from their wealth. On the contrary, in the regulations, where there is charity, or donation and good loan, people enjoy of many favours. In such societies, the poor are not disappointed, and the rich are not encountered with callousness of the heart and do not mind the multiplication of wealth. So, in these regulations, the deprived do not think of revenge, theft, and the like, and the rich are not anxious about guarding and protecting their properties.

This society will have a relative equilibrium accompanied with kindness, compassion, security and mutual understanding.

In Tafsir Kabir by Fakhr Razi, it is cited that when usurer obliterates equilibrium, compassion, and human justice from him, his self and his property will be cursed by the poor, and every moment, hatred, plot and theft threaten him. This is an example of that effacement which is stated in the verse.

Explanations

1. Do not note and gaze at only the apparent growth of wealth.

2. Sustenance is with Allah. The possessor of wealth may be deprived of welfare while the poor may often live in the best state of peace of mind.

3. Usurer is the one who is very ungrateful, and sin has settled in his soul: "ungrateful sinner". By taking interest, he makes himself debtful to people. He makes his livelihood unlawful for himself, and also he nullifies his worships. He lets callousness, greed and avarice dominate over him.

Yes, He is a very ungrateful, as well as a sinner.

4. To efface the wealth emerging from usury is Allah's way of treatment which will be continued forever. The reference for this meaning is the Qur'anic word /yamhaqu/ 'efface' where the present tense of which, in Arabic, denotes the continuity of the verb.