Besides the NYT trying to disingenuously promote Shariah through association with non-usary activities, in fact usary, per the article, is not being avoided at all. Instead, the bank merely creates a fiction whereby the entire cost of a house, plus 30 years of interest rates, is added up and then divided across the time payments of the loan. So where is the denial of usary here? Why not just call all of the interest each month chocolate drops, and make the loan agreement include chocolate drop payments? The whole article is a fraud, designed to shove Shariah in everyone’s faces as some sort of reasonable but profound power that even banks must obey. You should read the article, though - the NYT makes more favorable quotes towards faith in God than they have in the entirety of their last fifty years of articles about Christianity. What brazen hypocrites they are.
They can also sell a property without interest and instead charge a “service fee” or some such rot. It’s all smoke and mirrors. And Allah knows best.