In Minneapolis, if you want a small-business loan from the city, you have two options. You can take the standard loan and pay interest like every other borrower. Or you can take the Sharia-compliant version, which charges the exact same amount but calls it a "rate of return charge" instead of interest.
The money moves the same direction. The city collects the same 2%. The only difference is what the paperwork calls it.
Minneapolis has run this program since 2007 and has issued $1.44 million through loans capped at $75,000 each. And Minneapolis isn't alone.
Louisville, Kentucky built a Sharia-compliant track into its METCO small-business lending program. Seattle developed what it calls "Housing Tools for Sharia-Compliant Lending." Philadelphia's housing plan explicitly calls for developing a Sharia-compliant financing product. Maine is pushing state-chartered credit unions to offer the same.
These are not experiments. These are official government programs, passed through city councils and state agencies, built around one specific religion's financial requirements.
The requirement is riba. Islamic law prohibits the charging or paying of interest — a principle called riba in Arabic. The government workaround is semantic: charge the same amount, collect the same fee, label it differently. "Rate of return." "Cost plus profit." "Service charges." The program changes the vocabulary. The borrower still pays.
The workaround is not free. Building a parallel lending system means hiring specialists in Islamic finance law, designing separate documentation and compliance frameworks, and absorbing the risk when non-standard loans default — which Minneapolis's program has experienced. The city's own materials say borrowers "come out the same financially." If that's true, there was no reason to build the parallel system. If it's not true, the city has been misrepresenting the program to the public.
Either way, someone paid for it.
No city has built a parallel system to comply with Catholic canon law. Louisville's small-business loans aren't structured around Orthodox Jewish prohibitions on interest. Seattle has no equivalent program for any other faith's financial requirements. The First Amendment's Establishment Clause prohibits the government from favoring one religion over others. These programs do exactly that — by design, by name, and in public documents.
Governor Greg Abbott drew the same line recently, forcing Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport to cancel plans for Islamic Wudu foot-washing stations in Terminal D. "Government-owned airports cannot favor one religion over all others," Abbott posted. Chicago's O'Hare already has the stations. One state is saying no. A half-dozen blue cities are still saying yes.
Six cities. Multiple states. One religion's requirements. Every other faith in America does business within the standard system.
These governments built the exception on purpose.
