comment by Jerry Gordon

by Rebecca Bynum, New English Review, March, 2008

The good news about Islamic economics is that it is largely cosmetic and therefore unlikely to be disruptive to the global economy. The bad news is that Islamic economics is largely cosmetic and unlikely to be disruptive to the global economy. “Islamic finance” and Islamic financial instruments are not economic but political in nature and serve as vehicles for creeping Islamization in the West. They are not more stable, they are not even strictly “islamically” compliant but, rather, involve financial sleight of hand. Nonetheless, the willingness of Western banks and other financial groups to participate eagerly in constructing pseudo-Islamic financial instruments, that is to participate in what is essentially a charade, is not, because they do not result in truly “Islamic finance,” therefore a matter of benign unconcern. For the mere effort by Westerners to supply what is touted as “Islamically correct” – and hiring, up and down the line, Muslim clerics and “consultants” in Islamic law and finance to give their imprimatur, does provide another example of outward kowtowing to Islam, and also, more importantly furthers the illusion of Muslims that they can live anywhere in the world under a separate, and in their minds superior, set of economic rules; in reality, this is simply not the case. In addition, when implemented in the West, Islamic economics softens resistance to Islam by encouraging Westerners to grow used to satisfying, even eager to satisfy, Islamic norms.

Muslim economists seem to spend most of their time and energy searching for ways to put an Islamic gloss on existing Western economic structures. The economist Timur Kuran points out that few Muslims take Islamic finance seriously and yet many of our institutions of higher learning and many Western bankers are, per contra, taking it very seriously indeed.

Today, many American universities are being subsidized by Arab/Muslim funding. Harvard, for example, hosts an annual forum on Islamic finance, with almost all of the participants being themselves Muslims, essentially renting space at Harvard and thus as well the Harvard name – it becomes the “Harvard forum on Islamic Law and Finance,” and usually the main speaker, and a handful of the non-Muslim academic participants, are former or present Harvard faculty members, some of them conceivably unaware of what “Islamic finance” is really all about (hint: not economics but politics), and no doubt exorbitantly paid, directly or indirectly, for their useful appearances and prestige-sharing. (Continue Reading This Article)