It’s hard to believe that a financial institution as sophisticated as Goldman Sachs could be so incredibly stupid, but the available evidence with regard to Goldman Sachs’ ill-fated venture into Sukuk (Islamic bonds) indicates that there were some real knuckleheads at the firm.

We might argue that they were knuckleheads just for getting into the world of Shariah in the first place, but the lure of greed is immense, so we understand what they were up to.

Allow us a moment to backtrack now. You may recall a little over a week ago we reported on Goldman’s foray into Shariah-compliant bonds:

https://shariahfinancewatch.org/2012/01/31/goldman-sachs-lies-down-with-dogs-and-gets-fleas/

Now the plot has thickened somewhat. The latest reports from state-controlled Islamic media is that Goldman Sachs may have published some prospectuses for their Sukuk offering in which they listed Shariah scholars who had not reviewed the offering. This is bad form in any business transaction, Shariah or otherwise, and represents a fundamental error on some poor sap at Goldman which would cost him or her their job no doubt.

But what is especially ironic about this affair in terms of Shariah Finance is that committing an act like this in any of the nations in which Shariah plays a prominent role in justice–such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Sudan for instance–could very well land the perpetrator in a world of trouble that would result in some primitive, brutal form of punishment. We would like to note that the useful idiots at Goldman Sachs who think that promoting Shariah-Compliant Finance is a good idea would almost certainly not want to live under such a system. Why then are they inviting that system in through the West’s financial backdoor???

http://arabnews.com/economy/article572991.ece

 

 

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