is made by Mahmud El-Gamal. In favor of making analysis of istislah (public interest) rather than qiyas, (i.e. using analogy to apply injunctions to new circumstances) "the final arbiter in the area of financial transactions", Gamal quotes the twentieth-century Azhari jurist and legal theorist Abdul-Wahhab Khallaf: “Benefit analysis and other legal proofs may lead to similar or different rulings. ... In this regard, maximizing net benefit is the objective of the law for which rulings were established. Other legal proofs are means to attaining that legal end [of maximizing net benefits], and objectives should always have priority over means.”El-Gamal, Islamic Finance, 2006: p.28-9 El-Gamal quotes 14th century Maliki scholar Al-Shatibi stating that the legal ends of Islamic law "are the benefits intended by the law. Thus, one who keeps legal form while squandering its substance does not follow the law." El-Gamal also finds it curious that classical jurists consider 'urf (or adherence to convention or customary practice) an important "legal consideration" (for example Hanafi jurist Al-Sarakhsi writes "establishment [of rights, etc.] by customary practice is akin to establishment by canonical texts"), and one that is not fixed but changes as customary practice changes. But when it come to banking, contemporary orthodox scholars do not consider "customary practices" to constitute a "legal consideration". Future Mohammad Omar Farooq argues the prevailing doctrine of interest-equals-riba may eventually follow other such "long-standing orthodox" but no longer accepted practices such as hadd capital punishment for apostasy from Islam, or that "triple talaq" (i.e. by a husband divorcing his wife by declaiming "talaq" aloud three times). Issues in interest as riba an-nasiya Opposing sides Most Muslims and most "non-Muslim observers of the Islamic world" believe that interest on loans (also on bonds, bank deposits etc.) is forbidden by Islam. (Such loans — or banks that make them — are sometimes referred to as ribawi, i.e. carrying riba.) This "orthodox" position is fortified by "voluminous and overwhelming" scholarly literature. Among the Islamic bodies that have declared all interest to be riba include the First International Conference on Islamic Economics (1976), the Fiqh Academy of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (1986), the Research Council of al-Azhar University (1965), and the Federal Shariah Court of Pakistan in a 1991 judgement. Scholars and authors who have declaring that there is a religious consensus (ijma) on the subject include Abul A'la Maududi (1903–79), Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Wahbah al-Zuhayli, Tariq Talib al-Anjari, Thanvir