Australia considers adopting Islamic banking
Financial institutions and the government are considering introducing Islamic banking and its principles to the Australian financial system.
Industry experts say Islamic banking is one of the fastest growing sectors in the global banking industry, and is worth an estimated $US200 billion worldwide.
The Asialink Islamic Banking Colloquium, held in the Australian city of Melbourne, has heard Islamic banks have largely escaped the fallout from the economic crisis by adhering to Islamic principles of prohibiting interest and sharing of profit and loss between banks and borrowers.
A leading academic on Islamic banking, Professor Abdullah Saeed from Melbourne University, says there is potential for further growth in Australia.
“There is a significant Muslim community here, but its not just for Muslims in Australia,” he said.
“A lot of conventional banks are interested in and a number of Islamic banks are actually moving into Australia so we’re not just talking about a Muslim issue.
“It is one of the ways of dealing with banking and finance [which just] happened to be called Islamic.”
For more on Islamic banking, see my article An examination of the discriminatory practices of the National Australia Bank:
Introduction
A report on ABC’s Lateline program recently has brought to the fore something which I have been talking about recently: Islamic finance coming to Australia. According to Ali Moore, Islamic banking is one of the fastest growing sectors in finance, fueled by petro-dollars and with Australia being near the hub of Islamic banking for the Asia-Pacific - Malaysia, there seems to be growing pressure on Australian financial institutions to cash in on the “halal dollar”.
Islamic banking works on the principle of risk sharing, as interest, referred to as “usary” is forbidden in Islamic or Shari’a law. This aspect of Islam is used to persuade non-Muslims into thinking that Islamic finance is somehow fairer than normal financial arrangements. This is the aspect that is most concerning. Muslims are waging a multi-tiered Jihad against Australians. At the bottom level there are various “peace and harmony forums”, infiltration and co-opting of mainstream Christian churches, then there is infiltration that reaches all the way up to high level financial institutions such as the National Australia Bank (NAB).
The concern is that while residents have some very small measure of redress against a Development Application (DA) for an Islamic school for example, there is nothing anybody can do in regards to Shari’a banking. Providing it follows all of the rules and regulations in Australia, it will become just another financial product. The sting in the tail is that it represents the imposition of Shari’a law in a secular society. And make no mistake, Islamic Banking is an expression of Shari’a law, a concept developed by the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood for the purposes of spreading the law of Allah throughout the world.
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