‘’SURVEY ON BANKING AND INTEREST WITHIN MUSLIM COMMUNITY’’ was carried out by the Study Circle of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, Delhi & Haryana – under the stewardship of Dr. Waquar Anwar and a team of volunteers assisted by Arshad Shaikh.
The idea was basically to collect empirical data regarding the banking practices of the Muslim community in India, which is the nation’s largest religious minority but significantly backward on all socio-economic indices. Level of Financial inclusion and utilization of interest accrued on bank accounts of Muslims was an area of interest in the survey.
The survey sample size was 340 which is representative of the Muslim community in Delhi; the confidence level was 95% with confidence interval of 5. The survey was carried out mostly among men and age distribution was evenly spaced out. Those having their own business and doing job as professional were balanced with a small number of respondents not earning as they were students, housewives or retired citizens without pension.
A significant finding of the survey is that the Muslim community of Delhi has by and large found its way under financial inclusion and almost all respondents maintained a bank account.
This graph shows the income distribution of the respondents with almost 88% having earnings that can be bracketed under low income category.
‘This graph plots the income distribution of the respondents against their occupation viz. business or salaried. As can be seen the income levels increase the percentage of salaried professionals increase. However their overall percentage among the number of respondents is quite low.
The number of Muslims who utilize credit facility from banks is extremely low. Possible reasons could be religious, lack of information, fear of default etc. A more detailed response from the respondents is required in order to analyze the reasons of this low credit utilization.
‘The number of people keeping the interest in the bank without using it is almost the same as those who spend the interest in charity. However the big surprise is 21% of Muslims actually utilize and consume the interest accrued in their savings bank accounts.
Some comments on survey results: We were expecting a high number of respondents to not avail any loan facility from the bank because of religious reasons. Result of 86 percent is on expected lines.
The 14 percent who have availed of loan facility is for housing, vehicle, education and personal reasons which means, it was taken for basic needs and not for luxury items or life-style purpose. Loans were consumption based and not for production purpose.
The real surprise was in the disposal of the interest-accrued. 21 percent of respondents said they consumed the interest accrued for their personal needs and did not give it in charity or keep it unutilized. People are not aware or in disagreement that one must disposed off the interest towards charity without any expectation of reward from God as an act of cleansing one’s wealth.
