Buy Your Land and Build Your House

There is a large billboard overlooking a busy intersection in the Atlas neighborhood of Fes that i pass almost daily. It is for a bank and in the picture a man in a suit is holding up a sign that reads in Arabic: Buy Your Land and Build Your House.

I first noticed the billboard because it was in Arabic whereas most advertisements for banks tend to use French, the language that has ruled commerce and business since the French colonization of the country at the beginning of the 1900s.

I was talking to one of my Arabic teachers about the idea of the house (dar) in Morocco. He told me that for Moroccans the house represents a stable piece of the future, for both the person who buys it and for their descendants. If you own a house, you feel as if the world cannot completely slip from under you. I know that this sentiment is shared by many people around the world although I don't agree with it.

We were speaking about houses and interest loans in the context of my teacher going through a chapter in a book by a Moroccan Islamic scholar with me about the problem of interest in Morocco. The author was speaking not only about interest as it is used in the buying of houses, but also about how Moroccans take out personal loans to buy the sacrificial sheep for Eid al Adha. He hypothesized that soon there would be interest loans for Hajj(!!!) just because many Moroccans and Muslims in general are already so lost and numb to how they are living.

One day in a cab ride I was shocked to hear the cab driver and a man sitting in the front seat speaking about how Moroccans take out loans for Ramadan, and then a loan to buy their kids new clothes and books for the school year, and then even a vacation loan for pay for their annual August holiday. They surmised that Moroccans are drowning in high- interest credit even if they would in the same breath tell you that they know it to be haram ( prohibited in Islam).

The idea for this post was sparked by the recent release of info regarding the credit boom in Morocco. Below I have pasted one short article that I have come across on www.bloomberg.net .

May God give us Success and allow us to turn away from all those things we know cause Him displeasure with us. Ameen.

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Mortgage Loans, Consumer Credit Climbs to Record in Morocco

By Tarek Halim

Aug. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Mortgage loans and consumer credits in Morocco surged to a record in the first half helped by lower interest rates.

Outstanding mortgage loans climbed 47 percent to 125.9 billion dirhams ($16.3 billion) through June, while consumer credits rose 28 percent to 22.7 billion dirhams, the kingdom's Central Bank said late yesterday in a report on its Web site.

Overall lending in the financial system increased 29 percent to 479.3 billion dirhams.

Heightened competition among banks caused interest rates in the housing industry to fall as low as 4.5 percent, while mortgage maturities rose to as much as 30 years. The housing boom has led to higher property prices even as real-estate developers built more homes.

A rise in consumption helped the economy grow an annual 7 percent in the first quarter, compared with 3 percent in the year-earlier period.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tarek Halim in Casablanca at thalim3@bloomberg.net.