Islamic Finance And Banking History

I came across a site with a course on Islamic Finance hosted by a fund manager, Tarek El Diwany, who advocates orthodox Shari'ah compliant finance.  Here he notes a subtle point I had not considered:

But, if it were indeed the case that the banker had the power to manufacture money, why did he not simply print receipts and spend them on his own consumption? Simply because, in spending his receipts, the banker would no longer own them. It would then be certain that in due course all of the receipts would return to his institution for redemption in gold - gold which never existed in the first instance. By lending the receipts instead, the banker could charge interest on the amount lent. Upon repayment, the receipts could be destroyed as easily as they had been manufactured, but the interest charge would remain as revenue.

As I understand it this fellow laments that most Islam is making similar mistakes they most Christianity made 300 years ago when it considered the issue of "usury" as an absolute prohibition.  For the record, the Catholic church still maintains and absolute prohibition on usury, what we might call interest, in any amount for any time period.

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