Introduction to an Alternative Paradigm for the Induced Paradigm in Islamic Banking

Thirty years after establishing the Islamic Republic of Iran’s usury – free banking system, there are many ambiguities about its success. After investigating sharia-related issues of usury-free banking system based on nominate contracts, it was observed that: banking structures and mechanisms do not have the capabilities to execute the contracts; actions taken by the designers, policy makers and executives of this system to confront the mentioned challenges may be categorized into two groups: First, the continuation of the banking system based on nominate contracts and correction  of the current situation; second, moving towards a different paradigm. This article concentrates on the second solution and explains a new paradigm named “bank contract”. Also, the currency used in the early years of Islam was the real money whereas the world’s present banking system is using fiat money which has its own regulations, hence the necessity of providing new definition of the state money and analyzing the existing banking and market systems based on that.  Finally, as banking and its functions in their modern sense didn’t exist in the early years of Islam and have to be recognized as a novel issue, the relationship between depositors and the bank and the relationship between the latter and receivers of facilities need a contract definition that goes with “bank contract”. Based on this study, usury-free banking system based on nominate contracts that now act as the underlying trend in the usury-free operational law, is not suitable for executing banking operations.