Urgent! Shari'ah-compliant student loans: only a few days left!

بسم الله والحمد لله والصلاة والسلام على رسول الله

As many will be aware, tuition fees for studying at university increased to £9000 in 2012. This is totally unaffordable for most students and their families. Even middle-class families would struggle to help out their children pay these fees.

The Government's solution (after being the cause) is to offer student loans to cover the entire cost. The problem is these are interest-based loans.

As every Muslim knows, ربا (interest/usury) is completely Harâm (forbidden). There's plenty of evidence in the Qur-ân and Ahâdîth. For the sake of brevity, we shall quote just one:

"Allâh has permitted trade and forbidden usury" [1]

This affects many thousands of Muslim students for years to come. Proportionately speaking, Muslims have more young people than other communities, so this affects us more than most, not least because of the interest element.

After much lobbying, the Government has finally agreed to a consultation to create an alternative scheme which would be Shari'ah-compliant. This consultation is in the form of a survey to gauge the demand in the Muslim community for an alternative scheme. If there's a poor response, they may abandon the idea entirely!

When you consider that thousands of bright Muslim students will be deprived of an education every single year, this takes on greater importance. By being part of the process, we can help not only those that want to practise upon the Shari'ah, but also save others from Harâm. Unfortunately, a significant number have taken out loans without realising they were impermissible.

As an absolute minimum, we should be aiming for 100,000 responses. This is an extremely conservative figure. Ideally, after accounting for those that don't understand English, we should still have at least 500,000 responses. Yes, you read that right: half a million. It's not impossible; it can be done (with the Help of Allâh).

Can you spare 5 minutes to help many thousands of Muslim students? Yes, you can. We all can, inshâ Allâh. The deadline is only a few days away: Thursday 12 June, 11:45pm. Firstly, fill in the survey yourself and then get sharing. Let's make this viral with a vengeance!

So without further ado, here's the link for further information (and includes the survey within the page):
halalstudentloans.co.uk

#BrightAndHalal

[1] Qur-ân 2:275