Thomson Reuters Head of Financial Jihad Whines About Media Coverage
The article linked below might be amusing, if not for the fact that the overarching subject matter is so disturbing.
In the article, Rushdi Siddiqui, Global Head of Islamic Finance at Thomson Reuters, claims that the “missing link in Shariah finance” is a dedicated media entity to cover the industry. Given that Thomson Reuters’ Reuters division is one of the Western world’s most established media entities, this seems like a precursor to things to come.
If in fact Thomson Reuters, which is already essentially a cheerleader for Shariah finance, further develops its coverage of Shariah finance, it would also seem to create an outrageous conflict of interest in which a major player in the Shariah-Compliant Finance industry that provides services to financial jihadists around the globe, would also be providing news coverage on the industry. Consumers and investors, of course, depend on this information, so the conflict of interest is one that could have a high cost in terms of innocent victims.
Evidence of this potential situation developing is apparent in Siddiqui’s article. He complains about the Western media’s coverage of events such as the epidemic of sukuk defaults, but laments the fact that the Western media does not provide “supporting data” about Shariah finance.
It is especially interesting to note that Siddiqui chooses to criticize Western media, which has a tradition of a free press, in Gulf News based in Dubai. By Western standards, there is no free press in Dubai. Dubai is certainly no democracy. In fact, a free press is a completely foreign concept throughout the overwhelming majority of the Islamic world.
Siddiqui does raise a few valid points in his article, however.
He points out that Muslims living in the West have not flocked to the Shariah-Compliant financial products that are being pushed out to the Western world from the Islamic world’s financial Jihadists. He also admits that one of the industry’s main goals is to sell Shariah compliance to non-Muslims in the West.
http://gulfnews.com/business/markets/the-missing-link-in-sharia-finance-1.754160
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