December 25, 2013 By Nathaniel Popper A noted Muslim law scholar, Yusuf DeLorenzo, recently pored through the books of Continental Rail, a business that runs freight trains up and down the East Coast. Along with examining the company’s financial health, Mr. DeLorenzo sought to make sure that the rail cars didn’t transport pork, tobacco…
As the financial crisis in the United States worsens, the conservative principals of a small group of devout Muslims have helped to insulate them from economic suffering. Their renunciation of the interest-based economy kept them away from traditional mortgages and away from making investments in financial service companies, whose stocks have plummeted. Islamic finance, a…
French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde has promised to make adjustments to the regulatory and legal rules to allow Paris to become a major marketplace in Islamic finance. Lagarde added that Western financiers could learn from Islamic banks and its “new principles for the international financial system, based on transparency, responsibility and…moderation.” London has attracted the…
Likely beginning by June 2009, Islamic banks will be authorized to open in France. Experts expect three banks will be shari’ah compliant – the Qatar Islamic Bank already established in London, the Kuwait Finance House, and the Al-Baraka Islamic Bank from Bahreïn. According to a study undertaken in May 2008, 500,000 Muslims in France are…
With the Sharia-compliant market growing by up to 15 per cent a year and estimated to be worth a trillion dollars (Dh3.67tn) by 2010, the number of Islamic investment banks in the UK is predicted to double within five years, said Samer Merhi, the executive director of the Gatehouse Bank, an Islamic finance house based…
