Qatar Moves to Shut Down Shariah-Compliant Divisions of International Banks
Hat tip to Creeping Sharia for this find…
For years now SFW has warned big Western banks like HSBC, Standard Chartered and Barclays about the perils of dabbling in Shariah-Compliant Finance. Each of these banks, but HSBC in particular, has happily jumped in bed with the financial jihadists to get their piece of the Shariah-Compliant pie.
HSBC went so far as to employ a real monster, Mufti Taqi Usmani, as chair of its Shariah Advisory Board–at least until the news of his ties to the Taliban, Jihad and hatred of Christians and Jews became so widespread that they could no longer ignore it. And then HSBC’s “solution” was to replace him with his son!
Well, now, banks like HSBC are starting to feel the pain of the downside of trusting financial jihadists.
Qatar’s central bank has ordered “non-Islamic” banks to phase out their Islamic operations by the end of the year.
This evidently does not mean that international banks will have to exit the Qatar market altogether, but their Shariah-compliant divisions will no longer be able to conduct business inside the kingdom. This puts the international banks at a severe disadvantage, since the regime in Doha has been pushing Shariah banking and Shariah finance hard for some time, both inside Qatar and abroad.
The supposed reason given for the move is that commercial banks were thought to be “mixing up” Shariah-compliant banking activities and conventional banking activities, but it is likely also about protecting local banks from international competition. It is no coincidence that shares of the Qatar Shariah-compliant banks surged on the Doha stock exchange in the wake of this news.
Interestingly, the largest “Islamic bank” in the world, which was also named the “Islamic bank of the year” in 2010 by the Arab Business Awards, Qatar Islamic Bank, has the infamous Jihadist Sheikh Yusuf al-Qardawi as the chair of its Shariah advisory board. An Egyptian, Qaradawi has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and has lived in Qatar for many years now, where he has close ties to the regime and has a weekly television show on the Emir of Qatar-owned Al Jazeera television network.
As a result of this decision, Qaradawi’s bank will benefit enormously. Qaradawi has trouble getting hired on by Western banks as a Shariah advisor, since he is banned from entering the US and Great Britain due to his ties to terrorist organizations and his leadership of the terrorist charity, the Union of Good…
http://www.businessinsider.com/qatar-banks-sharia-law-2011-2
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-02-07/hsbc-in-qatar-talks-on-order-to-shut-islamic-units.html
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