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It depends

I have a mortgage or a student loan. What do I do now?

This one genuinely turns on your circumstances, and no honest general answer exists. What it hinges on: whether an Islamic alternative is actually available where you live, what refinancing would cost you, whether leaving the arrangement would mean losing your home, and which scholarly position on necessity you follow. Take the specifics to someone who can hear them.

The honest answer turns on your circumstances. What it hinges on is below.

The long answer

Almost every convert and many lifelong Muslims in the West arrive at this question, usually already committed to a contract signed years ago. It deserves a straight answer about why there is no straight answer.

What is not disputed: interest-bearing lending is prohibited, and that includes a conventional mortgage.

What is disputed, and where the positions genuinely diverge:

  • Whether housing counts as a necessity that permits what is otherwise forbidden. Some scholars and councils, particularly those writing for Muslims in the West, have allowed a conventional mortgage where no Islamic alternative exists, reasoning from need. Others reject that reasoning and hold that renting is available and therefore need is not established.
  • What someone already in a contract should do. Positions range from exiting as soon as it is possible without ruin, to paying it down as fast as one can while seeking forgiveness, to refinancing into an Islamic product where one exists and is genuinely compliant.

So the things that actually determine your answer are all facts about you: whether a compliant provider operates in your country, what early repayment would cost, whether your family would be housed if you exited, and whether you have dependents.

Two things worth holding onto meanwhile. The Qur’an’s instruction on debt is one of ease rather than severity: “And if someone is in hardship, then let there be postponement until a time of ease. But if you give from your right as charity, then it is better for you, if you only knew.” (Qur’an 2:280) And the general principle stands: “Allah does not charge a soul except with that within its capacity. It will have the consequence of what good it has gained, and it will bear the consequence of what evil it has earned. "Our Lord, do not impose blame upon us if we have forgotten or erred. Our Lord, and lay not upon us a burden like that which You laid upon those before us. Our Lord, and burden us not with that which we have no ability to bear. And pardon us; and forgive us; and have mercy upon us. You are our protector, so give us victory over the disbelieving people."” (Qur’an 2:286)

Do not let this question stall the rest of your practice. It is a real matter and it deserves a real answer from someone who knows your situation — but praying, fasting and everything else continue in the meantime, and a person carrying a debt they are working out is not a person on hold.

What it rests on