Catastrophe (33 page)

Of course, as Alexiev points out, it’s almost impossible to invest money without risk or interest. So Shariah-compliant financing resorts to subterfuge:

The first company to set up a Shariah-compliant fund was Dow Jones, which set up the world’s first Islamic market index in 1999. Now there are seventy separate Islamic indexes.
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Investor’s Business Daily
has reported that “Wall Street is jumping into this hot new market [of Shariah compliant financing] oblivious to the risks not just to the bottom line, but to national security. It knows little about Shariah law and is turning to consultants to create ‘ethical’ products to sell.”
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The newspaper reported that “Citibank and Goldman Sachs, for example, are creating investment vehicles that cater to Muslim investors in order to grab some of the billions in management fees in the offing. These products include Shariah-compliant bonds, mutual funds, mortgages, insurance, hedge funds and soon REITs.”
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Dow Jones, and other mutual funds and financial advisers who set up Shariah-compliant indices, license the right to use them as an investment guide. Frank Gaffney explains that “The Dow Jones Islamic Index’s first customer was a Cayman Island company, which licensed both the use of the Islamic index and the Dow Jones name to create the Dow Jones Islamic Index Portfolio.”
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Institutional compliance with Shariah law is a slippery slope. Today it means not investing in any company that makes pork. But it also means not putting your funds into any company that makes weapons for the American or Israeli military. Tomorrow, Gaffney speculates, it might be used to require companies to have “footbaths in public institutions, prayer rooms and time off for prayers in both public and private sector establishments, latitude for cabdrivers and cashiers to decline to do business with certain customers or handle certain products, an Islamist public school in Brooklyn, etc.”
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But beyond the money Shariah-compliant funds channel into terrorist groups, the very propagation of Shariah law as a legitimate way to regu
late our society runs directly counter to our most elementary conceptions of personal freedom, equality, and social justice. Shariah law requires a lot more than a certain diet, the avoidance of pornography, and limits on interest income. Gaffney points out some of its other inconvenient requirements, which call for “beheadings, stonings, floggings and amputations for petty crimes in places like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Sudan. Indeed, it is the same Shariah law that underlies the doctrine of war called Jihad used by Islamist terrorists to impose through violent means their theocracy and legal code on the entire world.”
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Alex Alexiev says that the main political objective of Shariah-compliant financing is “to legitimize Shariah in the West,”
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to isolate Muslim communities from mainstream society, and to “create Islamic enclaves controlled by Shariah in the middle of Western society.”
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And in the United Kingdom, at least, the Islamic fundamentalists are closing in on their goal. British prime minister Gordon Brown recently announced his ambition to make London the Islamic finance capital of the world. Part of the effort to make London Shariah-friendly was a decision by the most senior judge in the United Kingdom that declared that the Muslim community could establish its own legal framework and use Shariah law to settle marital arguments and regulate finance. Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips said, “Those entering into a contractual agreement can agree that the agreement shall be governed by a law other than English law.”
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According to Phillips’s decision, Muslims in the United Kingdom could use “Islamic legal principles as long as the punishments and divorce rulings comply with English Law.”
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Even the archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Church of England, seemed to be promoting Shariah rule when he suggested in a BBC interview that the adoption of Shariah law in Britain “seems unavoidable and, as a matter of fact, certain conditions of Shariah are already recognized in our society and under our law, so it is not as if we are bringing in an alien and rival system.”
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Incredibly, Muslims in the United Kingdom are now eligible to receive extra benefits if they have more than one wife, even though polygamy is illegal in Britain.
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The columnist Cal Thomas, a vigilant defender of our democratic values, explains the implications of applying Shariah law to divorce proceedings:

Gaffney warns that the Islamists want to go even further. They are calling for “Shariah-compliant schools (they already have them in Britain); a push in Canada for separate Shariah courts for all matters within the Muslim community; Shariah tolerance for honor killings of women in Germany; destruction of non Shariah-compliant businesses in dedicated ‘Muslim enclaves’ in France; and in various countries, Shariah approved assassinations of critics of Islam and anyone leaving Islam worldwide.”
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Where Shariah law is applied, the nightmares suggested by these draconian regulations become reality.

LIFE UNDER SHARIAH

Those living under Shariah law, especially women, are subjected to harsh penalties—even death—even when they are already victims. Consider these examples:

But the real goal of those pushing for Shariah-compliant funds at major financial institutions is to build them into the investments of the huge sovereign wealth funds amassed by Islamic countries. If these powerhouses, which control up to $5 trillion in assets (even after the recent worldwide financial crisis) can submit their portfolios to Shariah-compliance experts, the power of these clerics could become huge.

Originally, Shariah-complaint financing was eschewed by the sovereign wealth funds. Perhaps more surprising, it was actually unpopular among Muslims, many of whom simply didn’t trust the Shariah funds to give them good returns on their capital or even to keep their money safe. As Alexiev notes, “there is, of course, a small captive audience of devout believers that would practice it even if they were losing money, but the vast majority [of the world’s Muslim investors] looks askance at Shariah Compliant Financing.”
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He cites the example of Pakistan, where only 3.5 percent of all assets are managed in compliance with Shariah, despite an official edict—issued in 1980—promoting the concept. Alexiev notes that similar conditions prevail in most Muslim countries.
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So to encourage Muslims to invest in
Shariah-compliant funds, it became essential for Western financial institutions to embrace the concept. “Western involvement is key because most Muslims, rich or poor, do not trust their own banks and need the West to legitimate Islamic finance.”
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These Muslim investors found eager and willing partners in the Western banks, which, Alexiev says, “jumped into [Shariah-compliant financing] for one reason only and that is the lure of many tens of billions in transaction fees from an industry that currently has nearly a $1 trillion under management.”
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Still, some ask if Shariah-compliant financing can really be all that bad. Shouldn’t Muslims be allowed to invest in companies they believe in?

Of course—if they had a choice. And there’s the rub. Devout Muslims living in the West are allowed to use regular banks in the absence of Shariah-compliant alternatives, under the Shariah doctrine of “extreme necessity.” But, as Alexiev points out, “once [Shariah-compliant finance] institutions do exist, you are religiously obligated to patronize them exclusively. Thus, by allowing the spread of Shariah compliant financing in the West, we are, wittingly or not, pushing the Muslims in the hands of the Islamists.”
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The current flirtation with Shariah-compliant financing of the world’s major banks and investment houses is bad enough. But if Shariah-compliant financing ever marries the sovereign wealth funds from Muslim countries, they could constitute a massive financial power, capable of transforming Western civilization. Or destroying it.
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The Center for Security Policy warns that “it is very likely that Islamic banking and Sovereign Wealth Funds [from Islamic countries] are rapidly becoming one and the same phenomenon. This would mean that at some point in the near future, if not already, Sovereign Wealth Funds will become an instrument for promoting and legitimating Shariah in the West.”
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Even after the market crashes of 2008 and 2009, Sovereign Wealth Funds have massive amounts of cash to invest. Although not all of these funds are Islamic—some are Russian and Chinese and from Western nations—many of them are.
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Once these funds become fully linked with Islamic sovereign wealth funds, their financial clout may well multiply dramatically. But sovereign wealth funds can’t just come to American banks and ask them to invest in
Islamic causes or not to invest in any “tainted” industry. They can, however, use the premise of a Shariah-compliant financial vehicle to maintain that they are simply honoring their religion and its principles.

Giving Muslim extremists massive leverage by linking sovereign wealth funds with Shariah-compliance boards is a frightening prospect indeed. Imagine the likes of Sheikh Muhammad Taqi Usmani deciding which companies should or should not get massive investments from the sovereign wealth funds of countries such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and others.

As the global financial crisis deepens, the demand for capital—from anywhere—will become increasingly acute. If the powers controlling the sovereign wealth funds from Islamic countries demand the inclusion of Shariah-compliance provisions in any investments they make, it is hard to see our financial policy makers worrying too much about the impact of these funds on our freedom. As Gaffney puts it, “there will be a Katie-bar-the-door attitude toward funds from these sources,” and the danger of widespread proliferation of Shariah-compliant financing will be even greater.
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Just ponder for a moment what a catastrophe that would be. In order to attract the precious money controlled by these sovereign wealth funds, companies would have to pitch their activities to appease and please the extremist Shariah-compliance officers. It would put the power to control us into the hands of those who want to destroy us.

Not only could these advisers use this massive leverage to hurt the United States, the international Jewish community, and Israel, they also could use it to destabilize our entire capitalist system (or what is left of it when Obama gets through with it).

Consider the mayhem that a few mortgage lenders visited on the American economy when they went around issuing subprime mortgages—or the destabilization that occurred when savings and loan associations promoted crony investments in the 1980s. Our financial system is highly vulnerable to just these kinds of shenanigans, and Shariah-compliant financial advisers would be only too happy to figure out how to use that exposure to their advantage.

The airplanes of 9/11 smashed the towers of the World Trade Center. But Shariah-compliant financing has the potential to go further and smash our country’s fragile economic future.

ACTION AGENDA

Think there couldn’t possibly be much you can do about Shariah-compliant financing? Think again! With the U.S. government moving to buy shares of stock in all the nation’s major banks and financial institutions—and, likely, nationalizing many of the major banks—it is the government,
our
government, that must decide whether or not to allow Shariah-compliant funds to be established.

And, as Frank Gaffney points out, for a government-owned institution to have a Shariah-compliant fund is a clear violation of the First Amendment. It involves a state action (or an action by a bank either owned by the government or in which the government has an ownership stake of 40 percent or higher) to benefit an “establishment of religion,” which is, thank God (again, pardon the pun), prohibited by the First Amendment.