Ma`rifat Eqtesadi

Religious leaders place great emphasis on meeting living needs of poor classes of society by interest-free loan. Accordingly, interest-free loan is discussed as one the ways of supplying and allocating resources in interest-free banking. A relevant issue in allocating interest-free resources is the commission of such loans. The present paper studies the legitimacy of commission of interest-free loan and methods of its calculation. The hypothesis of the paper is that fixing the commission as a percentage of nominal sums of the loan are incompatible with the real meaning of commission. The research findings indicate that there are signs which show that calculation of commission of interest-free loan in Iran's bank is formal. Citing Shiite jurists' view on commission and analyzing the ways proposed to receive it, this paper proposes three ways to finance the facilities of interest-free loans: financing interest-free loans using Muslim common treasury; allocating a part of interest-free loan resources to investment; and calculating the real commission. It is expected that researchers of Islamic banking eliminate any usury doubts cast on this Islamic financial contract by devising other ways to finance the expenses of interest-free loan.