A recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) report has argued that the rapidly growing Shariah banking sector may accelerate economic development of the Muslim world.
We are a bit confused as to why this is, seeing as the Muslim world has been awash in petrodollars for generations, yet its overall economic development has been patchy at best.
The article at the link contains a particularly misleading passage that we feel compelled to point out to readers:
Islamic banking came as a market response to the financial needs of devout Muslims who have been looking to invest their savings in a way that does not conflict with Islam.
This is not exactly true. “Islamic” banking came about as an outgrowth of the invention of Shariah Finance way back in the 1920s–around the same time that the Muslim Brotherhood was founded–specifically and expressly to insulate the Islamic world from Western economic influence.
In other words–and this is a very important point–Shariah Finance and Shariah Banking inhibited economic development in the Islamic world for many decades. It wasn’t until the Islamic world began to become fabulously wealthy due to oil in the 1970s that Shariah Finance started to make its move. Now, ironically, it is being used as a dawah vehicle for expanding Shariah to non-Muslim nations…a true form of Islamic imperialism…
