Considering the way that personal debt has been soaring since I wrote this, I'm more than happy to say that I still don't have a credit card (although, as in America, it's getting hard to function in society without one nowadays), and considering the enormity of the profits they recently announced, I feel quite justified in still not trusting the banks.

Yesterday the Chancellor and the Governor of the Bank of England agreed it was time to cut interest rates - though prudently, and minimally.

I must say that I found it hard not to dash out and spend some money, but fortunately I don't have a credit card. Not having too stable an income, I've always been wary of going into debt, and despite their encouragement, usually preferred to avoid ending up in the hands of loan sharks and bankers.

I don't trust their definitions of the value of paper money, which they will readily lend you (if they can guarantee no risk of loss) for you to give to someone else to put back into a bank for them to lend to someone else, and so ad infinitum.

I don't believe their wide eyed claims for the moral neutrality of the free market system, and anyway, I want morality at the heart of my politics and economics.

In fact, Islamic Law has never abandoned its condemnation of usury (charging interest on loans as a way of doing business).

Believe it or not, there can be alternatives. It hasn't always been seen as the only way to do things. It was condemned by the ancient Egyptians, Aristotle and the Greeks, as pernicious and socially destructive, and I seem to remember that Jesus had a slight disagreement with some money lenders.

It's always been understood that interest most naturally tends to oppress the poor, but the moral objection to it concerns the legality of demanding gain with no accompanying risk.

In the Middle Ages, a defaulting debtor could be taken into bondage by the creditor. Nowadays we send our debtors to prison at the taxpayers expense, which has seemed irrelevant to many, until they faced the reality of still owing money on a house that has just been repossessed.

Much the same way that many third world countries must feel after borrowing the money to buy our products only to find that the interest can cost more than the value of the goods, and they still owe the original loan.

Qur'an says: Those who benefit from usury shall be raised up like those driven  mad by the touch of the Devil ... God deprives interest of all blessing, but gives blessings with interest on deeds of charity.