comment by Jerry Gordon

Shariah banking goes big time with a conference in Riyadh today opened by horse fancier King Abudullah of Saudi Arabia. This Arab News article suggests that Islamofinance is a real growth opportunity with a skyrocketing increase of over 35% in 2007. With assets of over $600 billion, there’s a lot of Zakat (Islamic charity) for the ‘poor’ down trodden and Islamo terrorists. Let’s do the math. Let’s say that those Shariah banking funds earn a Zakat contribution after expenses of say 3% by year end 2008 when there could be over $800 billion in assets in the Islamobanks. That means that perhaps upwards of $24 billion to go to ‘zakat’ and, who knows, to support terrorists, too. Not great, but at least it’s something for the ummah. Wall Street is salivating at deploying this enormous Shariah cash hoard driven by the huge bow wave of petro dollar earnings from gas starved consumers here in the U.S. and around the globe..

By Abdul Ghafour, Arab News, June 2, 2008

Islamic banking is growing at an annual rate of 35 percent worldwide with assets of Islamic financial institutions amounting to a staggering $600 billion last year, Saleh Kamil, a prominent Saudi businessman and a pioneer in the field, announced yesterday.

Kamil, who is also chairman of the General Council for Islamic Banks and Financial Institutions, was speaking at a seminar organized on the sidelines of the 33rd annual conference of the governors of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) Group.

Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah will open the conference at Jeddah Hilton today, which will be attended by the ministers of finance, economy and planning of the 56 countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

IDB President Dr. Ahmed Muhammad Ali is expected to make some important comments during the opening session, especially on the bank’s plans to provide soft loans to poor member countries to stock food grains and expand micro financing as part of poverty-reduction measures. (Continue Reading this Article)