U.S. Interest in Shariah Finance Opens Dangerous Doors, Critics Say

Thursday, November 13, 2008


Shariah-compliant banking, sometimes called Islamic banking, is growing in popularity in the Western and Islamic worlds. But critics say American interest in the system at a time of economic crisis is opening the door to increased Islamic influence in the American banking system. Worse yet, some fear the banks may be helping to finance international terrorism.

In Shariah-compliant banking, lenders may not charge interest and investors cannot make money from forbidden industries like gambling, alcohol, pork and pornography. Selling debt, devising derivatives and short selling are also prohibited, and investments must be closely tied to actual assets.

In the U.S., the Dow Jones Islamic Index tracks Shariah-compliant companies and funds, and funds have sprung up like the Amana Mutual Funds Trust and the Azzad Asset Management.

American investment funds, like those offered by TD Ameritrade and Charles Schwab, can invest in Shariah-compliant companies, and those companies can offer investments in American companies. Top holdings in the Azzad Ethical Midcap Fund, for example, include Western Digital Corp., Southwest Electric Co. and Apple Computer, Inc.

But allowing Shariah-compliant finance in the U.S. is green-lighting a seditious system that supports jihad, said Frank Gaffney, founder and president of the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C.

"If you understand what Shariah is, you understand that it is a pretty awful system. Not something that you'd want insinuated in your society and becoming a major feature of your economic system," Gaffney said.

"Shariah (Islamic law as dictated by the Koran) governs all aspects of life, from the personal practice of the faith to how you relate to your family to how you relate to your business partners, to your community ... all the way up to how the world is run, and it is all one seamless program. You can't say 'I'll take the personal pietistic practice ... and skip the beheading and the flogging and the stoning and the global theocracy,'" he said.

Punishments for some crimes under Shariah law include amputation and stoning to death. On Tuesday it was revealed that a 53-year-old Egyptian doctor had been sentenced under Shariah law in Saudi Arabia to 15 years in prison and 1,500 lashes for allegedly getting a Saudi princess in his care addicted to drugs.

But despite Islamic banking's association with Shariah's harsh practices, the U.S. government is taking an interest in it.

On Oct. 25, while on an official visit to Saudi Arabia, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Robert M. Kimmitt told reporters that the U.S. was interested in learning more about Islamic finance, and the Treasury Department held an "Islamic Finance 101" course in Washington on Nov. 6 to educate government officials on its ins and outs.

Islamic banking and investment products sprang up beginning in the 1970s when the Middle East experienced its first oil boom, and have been growing in popularity as oil prices soared in the past few years.

Yet it's unclear who is investing in Shariah-compliant mutual funds and other investments, Gaffney said. "An awful lot of them seem to be petrodollar-rich potentates and companies and royal families."

Nicholas Kaiser, fund manager at Amana Mutual Funds Trust in Bellingham, Wash., said that his company's Shariah-compliant mutual fund products are no different from any other religious funds and that the company carefully screens its investors.

"Our shareholders are American. We don't take money from non-Americans because of money-laundering laws. We have to know our shareholders and be sure they aren't engaged in nefarious activities. We screen and check and verify every shareholder," Kaiser said.

He disagrees with Gaffney's assertion that Islamic funds are a threat to the American way of life.

"We simply take people's money, invest it and give it back to them when they want it. We don't try and convert the country. We don't have any religious position. We aren't evangelical. We aren't zealots. We're money managers," Kaiser said. "I happen to be Episcopalian."

Azzad Asset Management declined to be interviewed for this story.

Estimates put the Islamic banking industry in the hundreds of billions of dollars. And while it's a small portion of the global finance industry, the Islamic sector is growing — by more than 30 percent in 2007.

A board of Shariah scholars determines which investments are compliant.

As Shariah law forbids charging interest, Shariah-compliant mortgages, like those offered by Devon Bank in Chicago and Guidance Residential, which operates in 23 states, are attracting pious Muslim buyers.

In one type of Shariah-compliant mortgage the bank buys a home and then either leases or re-sells it to the purchaser in monthly installments — interest-free, but at a higher price.

The bank's profit and the buyer's payments wind up being similiar to what they would be if the bank charged interest, said Ibrahim Warde, adjunct professor of international business at Tufts University.

"In the Koran there's a verse saying that making money from trade is good and making money from money lending is not, so basically whenever transactions are structured, they are sales transactions," he said.

Rachel Ehrenfeld, director of the American Center for Democracy, said that whether they're sound investments or not, conforming to Shariah shouldn't be American policy.

"We should not allow Islamic banking to continue and definitely not to flourish in this country," Ehrenfeld said.

"Muslims in the United States who want to conduct their business according to Islamic banks can do it with mortgages ... but to allow Islamic banking as a rule to operate — it's our money and we shouldn't be abiding by Islamic laws. Period. I don’t want to have any kind of association with any laws that dictate wife-beating in Saudi Arabia," she said.

Ehrenfeld said that the practice of "zakat" — giving alms to the poor — while innocent on the surface can in fact be used to promote terrorism and the spread of radical Islam.

She said that that the money the Shariah banks give to charities goes to build madrassas and mosques and spread radical Islam and anti-American sentiment.

"They also send money to Hamas. They also send money to Al Qaeda," she said. "This is a huge Pandora's box. We don't know what the hell is going on with their charities ... even if nobody will say openly that they're giving money to terrorism."

In June, the Kuwait-based charity Revivial of Islamic Heritage Society was designated by the U.S. Treasury for providing money and material support to Al Qaeda, its affilitates and to acts of terrorism.

"It is illegal for anyone in the United States to provide funds to charities that have been designated by the Treasury Department as supporters of terrorism under Executive Order 13224. If the Treasury Department has information that anyone in the United States were engaged in such activity, we would take appropriate action," said Treasury spokesman Andrew DeSouza.

Warde, however, said that there is no reason to think that all Islamic financial institutions have terrorist ties.

"There are some people who equate all things Islamic to terrorism," he said. "Some people look at the world that way. We've seen that during the presidential campaign with the insinuations that Obama was a Muslim, therefore a terrorist. I don't think we should give much credence to that."

He said critics are not being fair to the system.

"People who don't like Islam and who are afraid of Islam would obviously not like the notion of Islamic finance. I'm not sure that those who hold this view necessarily know much about it, but it's some kind of visceral view that some people hold," Warde said.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,451416,00.html


""If you understand what Shariah is, you understand that it is a pretty awful system. Not something that you'd want insinuated in your society and becoming a major feature of your economic system," Gaffney said.

"Shariah (Islamic law as dictated by the Koran) governs all aspects of life, from the personal practice of the faith to how you relate to your family to how you relate to your business partners, to your community ... all the way up to how the world is run, and it is all one seamless program. You can't say 'I'll take the personal pietistic practice ... and skip the beheading and the flogging and the stoning and the global theocracy,'" he said.

Punishments for some crimes under Shariah law include amputation and stoning to death. On Tuesday it was revealed that a 53-year-old Egyptian doctor had been sentenced under Shariah law in Saudi Arabia to 15 years in prison and 1,500 lashes for allegedly getting a Saudi princess in his care addicted to drugs.

But despite Islamic banking's association with Shariah's harsh practices, the U.S. government is taking an interest in it."


"People who don't like Islam and who are afraid of Islam would obviously not like the notion of Islamic finance. I'm not sure that those who hold this view necessarily know much about it, but it's some kind of visceral view that some people hold," Warde said."


People who are just money hungry greedy sons of bitches will just always find ways to condone this shit and look past the despicable atrocities that they allow to be camouflaged by their greed.

Fuck Shariah Finance!



As a matter of fact......FUCK ISLAM ALSO.

.

I don’t know, maybe if had whipped a few people, both on wall street and main street, maybe we wouldn’t be in this economic mess…

Both seriously, man, you have issues…ugly, embarrassing issues…I hope all this public hatred of yours towards anything Muslim at least has some cathartic value for ya…cause it sure doesn’t paint a very pretty picture of your soul/intellect…

Guess I really couldn't care less how anyone perceives my feelings towards ISLAM.

The religion flat out SUCKS, and is evil as hell.

The entire religion, and those that practice it, should be brought up on charges of atrocities against human rights.

ISLAM is right up there along side NAZIS.

And, "The Koran" should be flushed right down the toilet with the entire religion, as far as I'm concerned.

Now, I suppose it could be that I just don't know enough about it.

On the other hand.....I really don't give a shit enough to want to know enough about it.

What I do know about it - SUCKS more and more every time I hear/read anything about it.


And that's all I need to know.



What is it - that article said......????:




Nuff said as far as I'm concerned.


......



.

Now, I suppose it could be that I just don't know enough about it.



On the other hand.....I really don't give a shit enough to want to know enough about it.



Nothing beats blind hate.

Are you wearing your White Pointed hood when you say this?

Blind Hate? I certainly wouldn't go that far, but I have to side with him on this particular issue. Wolf's got a point, someone needs a whupping (Can we start with dodd, frank and bubba?). Fact is, that probably wouldn't change anything. Fear of punishment is not a deterent for greedy cocksuckers. Pain AFTERwards is not something they even consider.

Look at the Muslims and how they have integrated themselves into British society. Oh... wait a minute... they haven't. What they have done is taken little baby steps, such as shariah law, and they now have widespread moonbattery going on. The muslim's have the brit's running crazy trying to meet their every demand, slowly increasing their influence (or eating away at the Brit culture, if you want to look at it that way). CAIR is trying to do the same thing here in the states, especially down in Florida and they are trying the same shit by abusing the HRC's up in Canada. The left calls it "fear-mongering", or intolerant, when concern over this is brought up (and depending on HOW it's brought up, it may be), and the right simply thinks this is something to be concerned about (and sometimes needlessly). Fact is... there are living examples, in other countries, of Muslims doing the same things in the US that they have done in other places, to THIER benefit.

Don't ever kid yourself into thinking that the hard-core followers of Islam, not even necessarily radicals, just want to 'get along'. They do not. They want to 'get over', and those that would be liberal in thier dealings with them will find that they are on the shit-list, just like others, but have actually contributed to the whole mess.

And notice.. I said HARD-CORE. I did not say ALL, EVERY, or even MOST. The hard-core group, considering themselves the TRUE followers of Islam with thier wacked out interpretations of everything, are NOT gonna assimiliate into any society.

This post has been edited by Loki520: Nov 13 2008, 05:23 PM

Exactly.

And as far as I'm concerned - they're ALL "Hard Core"....or they're NOT Muslim.

There's no such thing as a Moderate Muslim.....you either ARE, or you are NOT.

That's all there is to it.

If you're GAY - You're GAY.

You either SUCK DICK - or you DO NOT SUCK DICK.

That's all there is to it.

If you're Muslim, you either BELIEVE in the KORAN - or you do NOT BELIEVE IN THE KORAN.

If you DO NOT BELIEVE IN THE KORAN - you are NOT Muslim.




Kinda funny how that all works....ain't it.


.

I got it now.. All Christians are child molesters and also members of the KKK.. Got it..

So.. How often to you have to molester a child in your religion?

This post has been edited by AnthraxFan93: Nov 13 2008, 05:43 PM

Guitarzan,

That is certainly a belief your entitled to have. I would add that the INTERPRETATION of the Koran would separate them into various groups. And that may be dependent on thier exposure to particular schooling, teachers, families, etc... I will have to argue that there IS differences between them. I know quite a few, and each one of them will be the first to stand up and decry the behavior of those that they consider "radical" but you would consider "all".

Anthrax, being anthrax and all, is making a valid point (yea, I know... bear with me) but with stupid vague similiarities and end-runs that do nothing but insult. But, his point is that there are different shades of Christianity, correct? The KKK believed that God and the bible gave them authority and even the RESPONSIBLITY for what they did/do (As did the Nazi's, but remember... Nazi's were the PARTY, certainly not all the German people). Cleric's who abuse children are STILL Christians, so do we simply say that actions of the idiot few represent the beliefs of all?

Your a Republican, if I remember correctly (or at least pretend you are). Would it be safe to say that you assume a "wide stance" when you visit airport bathrooms?

You simply can't tarnish an entire community/group/religion with the same wide brush. You need to be a bit more surgical on applying that brush to only the CORRECT group.

Point is well taken. However it must be pointed out- there are 100 million Muslims in the world, and a fair estimite of those that are radical (Who believe in jihad) are about 10%. That's 10 million radicals worldwide. That's a lot of radicals.

Just sayin.

Edit-1 billion, not 100 million.

This post has been edited by kansascomet: Nov 13 2008, 11:56 PM

Where exactly are you pulling these numbers from? I do agree that there are about that many Muslims, but the 10% just seems very high considering the masses of Muslims don't live in that region.

Look it up. It has nothing to do with where they live, Einstein.

Ninety-nine percent of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims are moderate and see jihad as a self-cleansing process to get back on the path of spiritual excellence. Presidents Mubarak, Musharraf, Ben Ali (Tunisia), Kings Abdullah II of Jordan, Fahd of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed VI of Morocco, and other moderate Muslim leaders, all have told this reporter in the past two years that Islamist extremists are no more than 1 percent of their population.

When we reminded Musharraf that one percent of 140 million is 1.4 million, he said, “you’re right, but I’d never thought of it that way.” Now he realizes it’s a lot more than one percent as politico-religious extremists won the provincial government in the Northwest Frontier Province adjacent to Afghanistan, a share of the Baluchistan government, and 20 percent of the seats in the new national parliament.

One percent of 1.2 billion is 12 million Muslim fanatics who believe America is the Great Satan, fount of all evil, to be attacked and demolished. Whether al-Qaeda is centralized as it was before 9/11 or decentralized, as it appears to be after Bali and Mombassa, is immaterial. Islam is the world’s fastest growing religion. From Sweden (660,000 Muslims out of 5.8 million people) to Switzerland (also 10 percent), Senegal and Somalia in Africa, Sumatra and Singapore in Asia, and South America (especially Brazil and Venezuela), there are Wahhabi and Deobandi mosques. And that’s just the countries beginning with the letter S.

Islamist terrorist groups have plenty of places to hide—from the tri-border area of Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay where camps have been reported, to Colombia (where FARC terrorists have been hiding for 38 years), to Somalia in Africa, to Sumatra in Indonesia, Mindanao in the Philippines, even remote areas of the United States where radical Muslims were located, ostensibly engaged in peaceful pursuits.

Muslims are a majority in 63 countries. Of the 30 conflicts now under way in the world, 28 concern Muslim governments or communities. Amir Taheri, an Iranian author and journalist, says two-thirds of the world’s political prisoners are held in Muslim countries, which also carry out 80 percent of all executions each year.

Most imams in the thousands of mosques in European countries can preach anti-U.S. and anti-Saudi-royal-family sermons with impunity. They carefully refrain from attacking the host country because intelligence services are probably listening. In Washington, D.C.’s principal Saudi-administered mosque, the imam gives politics a wide berth. Many diplomats friendly to the United States usually attend Friday prayers. Vehement anti-U.S. tirades, however, are average Friday fare throughout the Muslim world. Imams do pretty much their own thing. Islam has no pope, no pictures of the Prophet, and no simulated portraits of Allah, who is genderless. Hate-mongers among the radical clergy use western freedoms in order to denounce them.

Many of the imams in America’s 2,000-plus principal mosques (for a population of five million Muslims) are recently naturalized U.S. citizens who were sent over as missionaries from both Iran and Saudi Arabia.

We are spreading the good word of our faith in America,” said the imam at the Islamic House of Wisdom in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, who came over from Iran ten years ago, “just as you send Christian missionaries to sub-Sahara Africa.” He also chided his interlocutor for dismissing his contention that 9/11 was a combined operation by the CIA and Mossad.

Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheikh who is now serving a life sentence in the United States for his part in the World Trade Center truck bombing in 1993, is revered by Muslim radicals the world over.

Vatican sources concede they have been steadily losing ground in Africa to “the Muslim penetration” for the past 30 years.

In Pakistan, a friendly allied country at the Musharraf-Bush level, flat-earth clerics who educated the Taliban leaders have refused any reform of the madrassas, the Koranic schools that inculcate the fundamental belief that America and Israel are the new crusaders hell-bent on destroying Islam. They proselytize a great apocalyptic war, the War of Armageddon that will end in the Muslim conquest of Rome and all of Europe, and later America too. Some 750,000 young Pakistanis are presently in 11,000 madrassas where they are taught that jihad is the noblest of human endeavors.

Gen. Hamid Gul, a former Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence chief who hates America with a passion, boasted that a greater Islamic caliphate was fast approaching, one that would marry the oil riches of Saudi Arabia with the nuclear weapons of Pakistan, “which could then deal with America on an equal footing.”

In Singapore, long before Gul’s prediction, Lee Kuan Yew, known as Asia’s Henry Kissinger, told UPI that the “greatest threat facing civilization over the next 10 years was an Islamist bomb and, mark my words, it will travel.”

It is hard to escape the conclusion that a U.S. invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam and replace him with a pro-American government will be seen throughout radical Islam, and large segments of moderate Islam as well, as yet another defeat that must be avenged with acts of terrorism. As the extremists read history, the defeat of the Ottomans at the gates of Vienna in 1683 triggered a reversal of Islam’s fortunes that has continued ever since.

Is Islam, as President Bush keeps repeating, “a faith based upon peace and love and compassion” committed to “morality and learning and tolerance”? Yes and no. Radical Islam is committed to jihad against the United States and Israel, or a war of civilizations between the Judeo-Christian West and the impoverished Muslim world. The Wahhabis and Deobandis hate all things American, and are intolerant vis-à-vis all religions outside their own warped view of Islam.

Moderate Islam is yet to find a voice that will roll back the extremists, a sort of Islamic Martin Luther, or at least a Martin Luther King.


Keep your head in the sand. It makes you look smart....

This post has been edited by kansascomet: Nov 13 2008, 11:21 PM

Wow, the American Conservative.. Who have a preset agenda to scare the American Public.. Maybe you can get maybe not a twisted/slanted view on the topic.

http://www.amconmag.com/article/2003/jan/13/00029/


This post has been edited by AnthraxFan93: Nov 14 2008, 10:08 AM