A Review of Understanding Sharia Finance. By Patrick Sookhdeo.

Isaac Publishing, 2008.

Sharia finance is meant to be an interest-free banking and finance system, and it now operates in various Muslim nations. Some Muslims wish to see it being run in the West as a parallel economic stream. And many Western governments are moving to accommodate Muslim economics.

Western nations seek to gain financially from such moves, but seem unaware that they may in fact be cutting their own throats. As this vital book shows, sharia-compliant finance is simply part of the wider move to set up sharia law in the West, which in turn is part of the larger goal of global Islamic domination.

Patrick Sookhdeo, a former Muslim now based in England, here offers a brief overview of what sharia finance is and how it must be seen as part of a bigger Islamic agenda. He shows how the Islamists have used this issue to promote their goal of global domination.

A separate Islamic economic system in Western nations is part of the push for a separate political and legal system. Committed Muslims see sharia law as the only true law, and consider Western, non-Islamic laws to be heretical. Thus the push for separate spheres of Islamic sovereignty.

Of course no nation can survive long with a two-tiered legal system, financial system, and so on. If Muslim immigrants coming to the West fail to adapt to that way of life, including its economic and financial system, then social cohesion is doomed from the start.

Indeed, many Muslims coming to the West have made it clear that they do not intend to integrate with the host nation, but to set up separate Islamic enclaves within it. And as the number of Muslims increase, the final goal of the complete Islamisation of society can more readily take place.

As Sookhdeo notes, “Islamic economics became an efficient weapon in the hands of Islamists planning for Islam’s domination of the world-system in all fields: political, military, economic and cultural. For them, the establishment of a worldwide universal Islamic state under sharia is God’s command to Muslims of all generations and the real aim of jihad.”

Speaking of jihad, another major concern is how Islamic banking and finance are a major means of funding international Islamic terrorism. Islamists seek to redistribute wealth in sharia finance based on the zakat, the obligatory donation all Muslims are supposed to pay.

This 2.5 per cent tax is in effect a type of income tax, and according to traditional Islamic teaching, the zakat is to be used in the funding of jihad. Says Sookhdeo, “According to Qur’an and sunna, God commands Muslims to devote their wealth and their lives to jihad.”

He continues, sharia finance “is part of a wider agenda of jihad, in accordance with the vision of Islamist ideologists of the overthrow of non-Islamic systems and the establishment of a pan-Islamic Caliphate that will rule the earth.” And he offers this sober warning:

“Western governments and institutions now gladly cashing in on the Islamic market are falling into the same trap into which Western governments fell when they supported Islamist radicals in fighting the Soviet Union. They are supporting the rise of a powerful system they cannot control and that might turn against them.”

Indeed, in the very same way Western governments last century were happy to prop up Communist dictatorships which were dedicated to overthrowing the West. Lenin once quipped that “the Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them”.

The push for sharia finance is a fairly recent development within the Islamic community, primarily promoted by radical Islamists. It was the militant Pakistani Islamist Mawdudi who initiated this drive last century. Says Sookhdeo, “The concept of an Islamic economy was integrated into the discourse of the Islamist struggle to weaken the West in preparation for the ultimate phase of establishing Muslim political hegemony in the world.”

Sookhdeo notes that Muslims themselves are quite divided on the interest issue, and many think it is usury that is forbidden in Islamic thought, not interest. The Koranic ban on riba is understood differently by Muslims, and many think the charging of interest is quite alright.

Indeed, many Muslims believe that Islamic economics are not only inefficient, but have no genuine roots in Islam. And as Sookhdeo points out, many Muslim critics charge the system with being filled with rorts and concealed interest, as well as being wide open to money laundering and other criminal activities.

And he demonstrates how regulation is not part of this system: “Sharia finance has not yet succeeded in establishing regulatory standards of disclosure or transparency, and given its hostile opposition and non-conformity to conventional finance and its norms, it is unlikely to do so.”

In this volume Sookhdeo also provides several helpful appendices outlining how sharia finance operates in various Muslim states; how the West is incorporating this into its economic system; and how we should understand sharia, or Islamic, law.

For those wanting a brief overview of this topic, but also want to understand how this is part of the bigger move to see all the West come under Islamic rule, this book is the place to begin.

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