In Part I, the following questions were answered…
…How is the riba Allah has forbidden the same as ordinary interest? I thought riba refers only to usury.
…How does interest harm society? Isn’t it a necessary part of every economy?
…Does Islam permit conventional mortgages?
…Aren’t Islamic home financiers simply changing labels, replacing “interest” with “rent”? What’s the difference between a conventional mortgage and an Islamic home financing?
…Isn’t home ownership an important step in establishing Muslim minorities in the West? Surely, that should make conventional mortgages permissible.
…What about necessity (dharura)? Are there any situations in which conventional mortgages are permissible?

7.   Imam Abu Hanifa said that there is no riba in Dar al-Harb (lands where the rules of Islam do not exist), basing his opinion on a hadith.¹³ Doesn’t this entitle me to take a conventional mortgage?
The traditional schools of Islamic jurisprudence consist of rulings and methodologies that rely on the expertise of a body of scholars who base these rulings and methodologies on a specific socio-economic context. It is not simply a matter of lifting an opinion from a classical jurist like Imam Abu Hanifa and inserting it, decontextualized, into a modern framework. The job of today’s scholars is to apply the interpretive tools of their respective schools within this framework.
The position of the Hanafi school and the Hanafi scholars with whom we spoke, including several leading muftis specializing in Islamic finance, is that one is not permitted to deal in riba, whether in Muslim or non-Muslim lands, or whether with Muslims or non-Muslims.