Islamic Finance May Be On to Something

BusinessWeek ^ | 12/14/2008 | Frederik Balfour

[sheik yerbouty]

To each hios own..

[Don Stadt]

Quite, but the Islamic system doesn’t engage in the riskier side of banking and stockmarket trading that the big European and American financial institutions did.

They weren’t alone. In Europe, several building societies and small banks maintained sensible borrowing limits and avoided high-rolling speculation, not for religious reasons but because it was the financially most sensible thing to do.

Those institutions have weathered the crisis in far better condition than the high-rollers, while the horse-traders have had to go cap in hand to governments to bail them out.

So you can’t really discount the Islamic banking system on the basis they made a profit despite preaching the evils of usury.

Is there some loophole that says it’s possible for TV evangelists to preach the tale of Jesus in the temple on one hand, and engage all sorts of financial tricks to create personal wealth out of their ministries, without being hypocritical?