Meanwhile in Londonistan: Hostage torturing extortionist Kaddafi has Tony Blair personally negotiating jizya;

Blair to meet families of Libyan AIDS children

TRIPOLI, May 25 -- The families of Libyan children suffering from AIDS after a court ruled they were deliberately injected with HIV-tainted blood by foreign medics said on Thursday they will meet Prime Minister Tony Blair. Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor are on death row in Libya after being convicted of infecting 438 children at a hospital in Benghazi, 56 of whom have since died.

The families said Blair is to visit Libya next week as part of an African farewell tour before he leaves office on June 27.

They said they welcomed his visit, and hoped a meeting would "relaunch the European initiative aimed at ending the drama and reaching an equitable solution that satisfies all parties."

"equitable" = Lockerbie bomber's release + billions in jizya

/Carthago delenda est

Posted by: Terp Mole at May 26, 2007 8:36 AM

I worked for one of the big five Canadian banks for 26 years. In Canada, financial institutions are regulated (though not controlled) by the government. Despite a loosening of regulations in the past decade, I really can't see sharia - compliant banking coming to Canada anytime soon.

Posted by: ImNoDhimmi at May 26, 2007 9:05 AM

The back-door approach.

Once these shari'a-panting Muslims grab hold of our economy, we're finished.

This info about shari'a banking is under the radar of most watchers. Ugh!

Posted by: Always On Watch at May 26, 2007 9:10 AM

I think there is some misunderstanding of the Islamic banking issue.

I have read nothing indicating that Canadian Muslims are trying to make the entire Canadian banking system compliant with Sharia.

I think what they are talking about is Muslims opening banks or other financial institutions that will offer Sharia-compliant financial products and services, and encouraging existing banks to offer such products *in addition* to their traditional types of loans, mortgages, credit cards, accounts, etc.

The new products would be analogous to other forms of socially and religiously conscious mutual funds.

That hardly qualifies as imposition of Sharia on the rest of the banking system. If it's a big enough and profitable market for the new products, banks will offer them but not only those products.

I despise rolling over into dhimmitude myself, but allowing Muslims to offer their own Sharia-compliant banking products and services and allowing them to voluntarily use them is not the same as making non-Muslims into dhimmis.

Posted by: Dave at May 26, 2007 9:44 AM

"I despise rolling over into dhimmitude myself, but allowing Muslims to offer their own Sharia-compliant banking products and services and allowing them to voluntarily use them is not the same as making non-Muslims into dhimmis."
Posted by: Dave

Sorry, Dave, but allowing muslims to have their own ANYTHING is dhimmitude, in my opinion. Keep sharia compliant banking, shopping, television, radio, dress, laws and anything else out of my fair country. And we should keep all muslims out too, while we're at it.

Posted by: ImNoDhimmi at May 26, 2007 10:02 AM

Fatah is a dead man. As Marisol already pointed out, he is going to be facing more death threats from the followers of the Religion of Peace™ now.

However, as for Sharia-compliant banks, there is some hope that they will not come to Canada, at least in the next few years. The banking industry is within the power domain of the Federal Government, and with Stephen Harper in power, I doubt that the Parliament Hill will surrender to the Islamofascists that easily.

Cordially,
dolphin.
http://www.acage.org/

Posted by: dolphin at May 26, 2007 10:38 AM

Maybe if the Canadian muslims want sharia banking, maybe they should move back to their country of origin and bank there.

Posted by: callmeinfidel at May 26, 2007 12:40 PM

I find it hard to understand the push behind introducing sharia banking in various parts of the west, when countries like Iran already charge interest.

http://www.ncr-iran.org/content/view/3529/152/

Are we going to be more sharia-compliant than them?

Posted by: Silvester at May 26, 2007 12:48 PM

@Dave

"I despise rolling over into dhimmitude myself, but allowing Muslims to offer their own Sharia-compliant banking products and services and allowing them to voluntarily use them is not the same as making non-Muslims into dhimmis."
*********************************

Well, Dave, as the unnamed Muslim Business Executive says in the article, the Islamic Banking is a scam/sham. So if that is what they want...and I think we would see that such ventures will not be very popular...then they can have it!

Posted by: ThinkForYourself at May 26, 2007 1:03 PM

Well, purely financial transactions differ only in the timing and magnitude of money flows and the means of calculating these. If a bank advances money it will always want more back than it gave to cover time value of money, risk etc. This is no different in Islamic banking. I believe, perhaps someone can confirm or correct my understanding here, that in one form of Islamic mortgage the bank buys the property and charges "rent," a sort of hire purchase deal. Now I would say that even an Islamic bank will have regard to prevailing interest rates when calculating the rent. This is the scam, the fraud referred to - they charge interest but call it something else. Second title only passes when the final payment is made. So in this case, the bank charges rent, but calls it something else, presumably extricates itself from the duties of a landlord, but retains title in the property until the final payment. Same reward, less risk for the bank. If Muslims want this, why not? I do not think there are any practices in Islamic banking which are not also used in financial transactions in the West. They just jump through hoops to avoid calling interest interest.

And no, they are not talking about imposing sharia rules on everybody, they want Islamic banking available for Muslims, that is all.

I'm not surprised banks are willing to go along with this. Perhaps my understanding is wrong, but in the case I mentioned there is less risk and less competition - there will not be as many Islamic products as non-Islamic products on offer. And how do you compare one banking product with another without quoting some percentage above the principal which is charged, i.e. interest, even if it is called something else?

Posted by: kevin at May 26, 2007 4:25 PM

If our banking isn't to their liking, then back to Mecca they should go.

I hear the ATM built in the side of the Ka'aba dispenses dinars every time you shout "Allahu Akbar!".

Every hair of the camel's nostril getting under the infidel tent means trouble for all of us.

Posted by: profitsbeard at May 26, 2007 5:28 PM

Kevin, above, is on the right track. There are a variety of devices used to avoid the appearance and the use of the word interest.

Timur Kuran ("Islam and Mammon: The Economic Predicaments of Islamism") well explains the ways in which Islamic banking and finance operate.

"... it is unclear that the Qur'anic prohibition of interest was originally understood to encompass the institution of interest as we know it today. What the Qur'an bans unambiguously is the pre-Islamic Arabian institution of 'riba', whereby a borrower saw his debt double following a default and redouble if he defaulted again." (p.14)

Various profit and loss sharing schemes are popular in Islam, but they pre-date Islam and are still used today in non-Islamic finance as well.

"By far the most popular financing mode of the Islamic banks is 'murabaha'... A producer or trader submits to his Islamic bank a list of goods that he wishes to purchase, let us say a ton of steel. The bank buys the steel, marks up its price as compensation for this service, and then transfers ownership to the client. Along with his steel, the client receives a bill at the inflated price, to be paid at some jointly determined date in the future. What makes this transaction legitimate from an Islamic standpoint is that the bank takes ownership of the steel for some time, exposing itself to the risk [... but] a millisecond suffices to make the transaction legitimate. From an economic standpoint, of course, an infinitesmal ownership period makes murabaha equivalent to an interest-based loan: the bank bears no risk, and the client pays for the time-value of money. There remains a semantic difference, which is that the client's payment is called a 'service charge' or 'markup' in one case and 'interest' in the other." (p.10)

Kuran describes other methods, such as 'ijara' or lease financing, which in effect by their structure amount to interest.

Kuran identifies the Pakistani radical Sayyid Mawdudi as a key figure in the resurgence of Islamic economics, which

"..was to be a vehicle for establishing, or reestablishing, Islamic authority in a domain where Muslims were falling increasingly under the influence of Western ideas. By replacing Western economic approaches with an Islamic one, he hoped to restore the Islamic community's self-respect and improve its coherence.

"Because Islamic economics was developed to serve cultural and political ends, it did not have to meet scientific standards of coherence, precision, or realism. It needed only to differentiate itself from the intellectual traditions that it was aiming to displace. Accordingly, contributions to Islamic economics typically begin by identifying the distinguishing characteristics of an Islamic economy. From Mawdudi to the present, the most fundamental of these characteristics has been the prohibition of interest. Two others have been zakat, which is an ancient redistribution system, and the requirement that economic decisions pass through an Islamic moral filter." (p.39)

Secular banks in the West will obviously chase a buck, whatever its source, and since Muslim clients have many of them, banks will play the game and cater for their needs as just for any another niche clientele.

Trying to understand just why historically the Islamic world has never progressed economically must take into account all the economists' classic requirements for prosperity, but also I believe the concept of interpersonal and contractual trust is crucial (see V D Hanson's account of the personal treasures that went to the bottom along with the shackled galley slaves at the battle of Lepanto, fortunes that the wealthy Ottoman captains and officers were unwilling to leave at home with family or such financial institutions as there were).

Above all, the inability of Islam to countenance the existence of separate legal corporate entities, corporations, companies, seems to have been a major impediment, not just to Islamic trade and finance, but also to the setting up of proper independent and autonomous universites. The West surged ahead using this concept, the petrified rigid Islamic world fell further behind.

Posted by: MBR at May 26, 2007 7:26 PM

In the meantime, wasn't it Iran where there was panic selling over interest rate cuts?

UK and Canada might want to follow Iran's lead in this regard?

Posted by: Infidel Pride at May 26, 2007 8:38 PM

The underlying scam would be that, in order to be "Sharia Compliant", the bank would need to pay fees to the local Imams to certify that it was Sharia compliant

And local Muslims would be put under undue pressure to do business with Sharia banks rather than regular banks.

As long as there are no Sharia banks, Muslims can deal with regular banks and say to their imams "Look, I have no choice here"

But a Muslim who chooses to work with a regular bank when a Sharia bank is available is an apostate. And the penalty for apostacy is death

Posted by: PapaBear at May 26, 2007 9:05 PM

Islam-compliant banking? What a load of crap!

I have read about three fatwas from the on-line purveyors of Islamic opinion and have concluded that "interest free" loans are a sham. (Notice the sarcasm quotes.) It requires that someone purchase an item at an inflated price merely to avoid the words, interest, on the doucment. One opinion told the poor fellow to have the seller calculate the interest on the car for the term of the loan and that plus the principal would be the price of the car. Hypocritical camel dung.

Posted by: Pelayo at May 26, 2007 10:32 PM

Hypocritical camel dung

oh, HA HA HA

Posted by: ewha1 at May 26, 2007 11:39 PM

The terms "Islamic banking" and "Sharia compliant" banking are ambiguous. Are they talking about hawala? An untraceable, unregulated, untaxed system that has been used to launder money and finance terrorism?

Posted by: special_guest at May 27, 2007 12:29 AM

No, hawala is different - it's simply using cash, and having no records of any transaction, but simply having a chain of different people transfer cash from point to point until that cash ends up in its destination. That way, no legal proof exists as to its source, while in the meantime, it ends up where it's meant to. Of course, all this implies that each point in the chain is very scrupulous about the transfers, and being a mafia operation with Islamic overtones, I'd guess that nobody would dare try and scam the Jihadis.

Islamic banking simply means charging no interest, which is a crock, because in Islamic banks, the principle is simply bloated and that's what the borrower has to pay back. In other words, Interest by any other name....

Posted by: Infidel Pride at May 27, 2007 3:15 AM

In many cases however, its private companies, who see Muslim banking as a lucrative business opportunity. So to say its only Muslim driven is not true. In fact banks have been more aggressive in seeking it an dpromoting it than many Muslim communities. NZ is a clear example. Most Muslims who were polled in market research indicated they were not interested in Muslim banking. The bank then, instead of walking away, sought to try and encourage Muslims in NZ through focus groups, using local ulaema, to change their minds.

Its not only Muslims contributing to dhimmitude, but irresponsible private corporations and "useful idiots".

Posted by: Haidon at May 27, 2007 4:20 AM

While your first comment, Haidon, confirms my third to last para above, your next point, that most NZ Muslims were not interested in Islamic banking, is directly and flatly contradicted by leading spokesman, Javed Khan, in this 2004 report:

"Islamic Bank to Share Its Profits and Avoid Interest"

NZ Herald
8 November 2004
By Julie Middleton

New Zealand's major Muslim association is setting up an institution to provide banking services that conform with Islamic religious law - meaning it won't charge interest. And it would be open to all New Zealanders, regardless of background.

The Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand is working with consultants Deloitte to create something similar to a credit union, with cash machines and all the services usually associated with banks. Capital is being sought here and overseas.

Javed Khan, the FIANZ president, said such services would be supported "one hundred per cent" by New Zealand Muslims, who had waited a long time for them. He predicted that an Islamic bank would unleash a lot of economic activity among the Muslim community's estimated 40,000 members in New Zealand.

Islamic religious law, or Sharia, prohibited interest. Money could be invested only in ethical industries, ruling out anything associated with the likes of tobacco, alcohol, or pornography. Profit-sharing replaced payment of interest.

If an Islamic bank customer wanted to buy something major like a house, the bank would purchase it, add a premium, then take repayment in instalments over time. "At the moment you have no choice," said Mr Khan, a solicitor with NZ Post. Many Muslims in New Zealand would not buy houses or start businesses, he said, as they were ill at ease with the idea of interest.

He had a mortgage, but admitted to feeling "very uncomfortable" about it as he was not following Islamic teaching. He found the lack of choice in financial services "inhibiting". "I would like to do so many things - like investing - but I can't."

Faris Azimullah, the director of Deloitte's Enterprise Risk Services, said Islamic banks offered stability and certainty as they were not exposed to interest rate fluctuations. They were open to all, and research showed they were attractive to non-Muslims. In strongly Muslim Malaysia, almost 70 per cent of Islamic bank clients were non-Muslim.

Research had also shown that clients got a "slightly better deal" financially compared to mainstream banks.

"This is a great opportunity for Kiwis to really ask their banks what they are doing for them," said Mr Azimullah.

Islamic banks were profitable, he said, and their loans had lower default rates than conventional loans.

The first Islamic banks dated from the early 1960s in Egypt and Malaysia. Islamic banks' assets worldwide were now estimated to be worth $363 billion. Some mainstream banks overseas, such as Citibank, Deutsche Bank and ABN Amro, offered Sharia-compliant products.

* Plans for an Islamic life insurance policy have been dumped by financial services company NZ ING Life. Managing director Naomi Ballantyne said the company decided two weeks ago that the numbers didn't stack up. [ends]

Could you kindly untangle this little inconsistency?

Posted by: MBR at May 27, 2007 6:12 AM

I find it incredible that people still state that "So long as "islamic banking" only applies to Muslims, what's the big deal?"

After all of these years, we still hear such comments?

Look (for the nth time), what Sharia Islam (in part) dictates is the SEPARATION of Muslim from Infidels. Got that, yet?

Shouldn't everyone (by now) grasp the concept of extortion? Or is this just oh, sooo difficult to comprehend?

Ok, let me put this is simpler terms -- you're a Muslim, you're living in Canada, you want a loan, do you have a choice as per bank? If there are Sharia Banks, the answer is "NO." Comprendez-vous? Verstehen-Zie? YOU HAVE NO CHOICE. got that? of do I have to repeat myself?

Next, of course, there is the "small matter" of "no interest." Ah, yes, oh so attractive. Until, of course, one realizes, that you need to pay a "fee" -- that's termed "rent" -- for how long?? hmmm... Just let your "bankers" -- Islamic style -- figure it out...Again, it's called "extortion" for a reason. Figure it out.

Posted by: J.S. at May 28, 2007 11:36 PM

Sorry for the delayed response MBR. I stand corrected, my information came exlusively from a member of the Wellington community, and from my own limited understanding of what was happening. I have worked with FIANZ and Javed previously, but did not realise that FIANZ is actually very active in this area. I also understand that the Ministry of Economic Development (yes a government Ministry) has been involved in building the business case. This is quite disturbing.

Sorry.

Posted by: Haidon at May 29, 2007 12:07 AM

What is very troubling to me about Canada is that the government is so lax up there about so many things that could prove suicidal (aka immigration into Canada) given the present situation(godknowsHOWmany Muslim 'extremists' hiding are lurking in Canada but there's probably plenty), some terrorist organization(s) could be building nukes to use on us and no one up there would suspect a thing...until it's too late.

Both Canada and the US (both western democracies, although sometimes it's hard to believe that about Canada) should remove Islam and Muslims from their territories ASAP. Danger is lurking up there besides here in the USA, and it is growing late.

Posted by: pythagoras at May 29, 2007 2:15 PM

Our local cable company has been featuring a series of ads (to get more cable tv subscribers), and one ad features a pair of snails (they married). The wife snail expresses her appreciation for "slooow." They don't "do quick" (they had to stop subscribing to the cable tv's internet because it was just too fast). In another ad the husband snail built his wife a spice rack -- which contained only two "spices" -- salt and garlic...a "mistake" the snail's wife has yet to forgive him for.

Anyway, speaking of "slooow" -- recently CTV televised an "inquiry" into the Air India bombing (the worst terrorist disaster in Canadian history), yeah, that event occurred in 1985 (the alleged culprits all walked free), and in 2007 the feds conduct an "inquiry". And today, CTV is reporting (this, I guess, must be a news "bulletin") about how the alleged 5 million dollars was NOT actually squandered in the sponsorship scandal, that's the alleged scandal that occurred, circa 1995.

By the time ordinary Canadians wake up to the mess we're in (with respect to Muslim immigration, infiltration, etc.) it's gonna be 20 years too late. We are a nation of snails.

Posted by: J.S. at May 29, 2007 3:55 PM