Beyond Debt Islamic Experiments in Global Finance

In his landmark work, the Comparative Sociology of World Religions, the German sociologist Max Weber identified ethical dispositions in Protestantism that he argued were conducive to the emergence of what he termed the “spirit of capitalism.” Weber argued that the spirit of capitalism—the notion that an individual had a moral duty to increase his or her capital—was particular to the North Atlantic countries that had been most deeply impacted by the Protestant reformation.