They charge interest through other ways in “Islamic banking”. That’s all I know about it. Basically financial engineering, ends up in a be same way. Afaik there is no Islamic economics, just a bunch of funny business to avoid going against the religion. Same system in most places.
Those schemes that attempt to bypass usury by calling it something else are not Islamic. Many scholars have called them out.
Proper Islamic finance involves risk from both parties. E.g. one party provides funding, the other provides labor, if the project succeeds, they both reap the rewards. If it doesn't, then the first party loses money and the second the labor.
Islam very clearly calls out schemes to construct loopholes to bypass prohibition. One such transaction is that of the Einah sale: one party sells an item for a certain amount to be paid by installments (say sells a car for $12,000 to be paid $1000 per month over the next year), then the same party buys the same car for $10,000 cash. What ended up happening is that party B owes party A $12,000 to be paid over the year, but they received $10K cash. This is absolutely forbidden. Similarly, any scheme that stitches together a series of individually permissible transactions to come up with an overall transaction that mimics interest is absolutely forbidden as well. We don't have loopholes in Islam.
