Session 4. 3.

For millennia, numerous faith and philosophical traditions discouraged money lending or forbade or stigmatized the charging of interest. By comparison, little theological, philosophical, or intellectual discussion has focused on resolving how money should be created in the first place. Who should have the permission to create new Dollars, or Euros, or Yen and add them to the economy? For what purposes can they create new money and for whose benefit? These questions are highly relevant at a time when the creation of money is being contested in so many ways (e.g., cryptocurrencies, central bank digital currencies, payment apps, etc) and blamed for so much (e.g., inflation, dropping demand for the US dollar, etc). These are inherently political questions with big implications for society and governance, which is why matters of equity, justice, power, and wellbeing for all need to be included in the conversation.

One thing that is precluding moral thought leaders from participating more actively in the discussion of money creation is that 85% of people, research shows, have an incorrect understanding of how their nation’s money supply came into existence. This paper presentation will clarify how money is created today and illuminate important moral questions raised by the process. The goal is to prepare participants to engage in the fight for money creation systems that are fair, truthful, accountable, and aligned with wellbeing for all.

Can high-level religious injunctions to steward the ecological commons change norms and choices? This paper examines prominent recent religious efforts to mobilize their faith communities and others in the effort to preserve and regenerate the ecological commons. While speaking primarily to the Islamic and the Catholic contexts, there are implications and consequences for others. Al Mizan (The Balance: A Covenant for the Earth) is a Muslim document seeking to identify efforts to preserve and regenerate the ecological and social commons as a core moral imperative in keeping with the Quran. Laudato Si (Praise Be: On Care for Our Common Home) is Pope Francis’ widely distributed encyclical on duties to care for creation, and has been called a document of ecological economics. Both offer specific suggestions as well as general guidelines, and most prominently, amplify the urgency of action. This paper offers an analytic review of AlMizan in the context of previous well-platformed efforts at securing and reviving the social and ecological commons. It also offers comparison to Laudato Si, and considers variable scenarios of impacts. From an institutional analysis perspective, such efforts can supply meta-constitutional and constitutional level understandings for efforts among pietists to regenerate eco-social commons. They do this by overcoming information problems and enabling coordination. The decentralized nature of authority in the context of Islamic tradition raises challenges for dissemination and adoption. The Catholic context, while more hierarchical and centralized, nevertheless has faced challenges in generating impacts from Laudato Si. Both documents recognize the urgent need for changes to protect and regenerate the planetary ecological commons. Both offer hortatory religious declarations combined with analytic claims about the state of the commons to persuade and motivate faith communities. We are approaching the 10 year anniversary of Laudato Si, and about 2 years into Al Mizan, this paper also explores their existing impacts and remaining potential.

Faith-based approaches to project financing, particularly but not exclusively in the Islamic context, tend to refrain from the use of interest-bearing loans. This has implications for preserving and regenerating social and ecological commons. Equity finance is an established method of non-interest based financing. As a partnership based model, equity finance requires the passive investors have more “skin in the game”, often through community ties, and this reduces the likelihood of speculative bubbles of the sort associated with leverage. It adds important guardrails to project financing that can be sustainable development goals. Further, it adds a stewardship component that aligns well with the preservation and regeneration of ecological commons, as well as in promoting a type of social commons.

Faith-based financial initiatives seek to cohabit or compete with mainstream financial practices, under the banner of prohibition on interest. This paper presents a scalable framework for transcending interest-based financial systems through productive partnership models, synthesizing Islamic finance principles, Catholic social teaching, and modern enterprise risk management methodologies. Rather than confrontationally opposing existing financial structures, we propose a positive-sum transition pathway that aligns institutional risk management with social and ecological resilience.

The research explores how financial institutions can evolve toward equity-based partnership models that prioritize real value creation over extractive practices. Our analysis suggests these approaches can promote financial, social, and ecological outcomes that are desirable from the standpoint of stewardship and regeneration of ecological and social commons.

This paper has two parts. In the first, it presents a process for introducing equity finance models into an interest-based financial system. In the second, it presents a proposal for sustainable affordable housing in Canada using cooperative project financing and institutional arrangements for enabling the project to be perpetuated.

Waqf is a concept rooted in Islamic tradition. It refers to a charitable endowment or a form of philanthropy in which an individual or entity donates a specific asset for religious, charitable, or social purposes. Waqf serves various purposes, including political legitimation, social status, and patronage, and it played a crucial role in colonization, urbanization, and settlement in newly conquered areas. It is not highly complicated to run a Waqf in an Islamic country that adapts Islamic legal, social, and cultural framework. It is a question of balancing the preservation of Islamic principles with positive social impact and legal compliance within the specific context of non-Islamic countries. In this paper, I analyze the institution of Waqf using the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework to provide insights into the governance, management, and sustainability of these religious and philanthropic institutions. I aim to evaluate the performance of the Waqf institution in terms of its ability to fulfill its charitable and religious objectives over time in non-Islamic contexts, identify any challenges or issues related to the governance and management of Waqf in such contexts, and propose recommendations or interventions that could enhance its governance, sustainability, and impact.