Is it rational to fear Shariah-compliant finance?

Robert Spencer, the intrepid proprietor of Jihad Watch and brave patriot battling the Jihadists in speech, recently emailed SANE’s David Yerushalmi to ask him for his response to a commenter at Jihad Watch who just could not believe that Shariah-compliant finance was the threat we all said it was. This came up at JW because Robert Spencer was a spokesman at a press conference pointing out the U.S. Treasury’s fatal embrace of Shariah as a panacea to what ails the U.S. financial markets. So it was that the JW commenter wrote the following:

How exactly do you outlaw sharia finance or sharia compliant investing without crapping all over free enterprise (or capitalism in general)? And furthermore, show me any big business who would be in favor of Jihadist (holy warrior) attacks against ANYONE. It’s not good for business! Get a grip, man.

Normally, such a comment would require no response but since this is exactly what we have been hearing in slightly different form from the SEC and the Treasury, we thought we’d post Mr. Yerushalmi’s responsive email to Robert Spencer:

[1] If Shariah does in fact obligate its faithful to violently overthrow the US gov’t and to use subversive means until violence is possible, then it is illegal like ANY OTHER conspiracy or sedition to overthrow the US gov’t.

 

[2] If offerors of SCF financial products do not disclose all material facts about SCF, and that would most certainly include the danger articulated in No. [1] above, they are in violation of the most basic disclosure laws which apply to the securities markets, banks, and other financial products which ALL require that the offeror disclose all material facts that a reasonable post-9/11 investor would consider relevant to his investment/purchasing decision.

 

 

[3] No one is arguing that the head of HSBC or Dow Jones wants this country to