This coming Tuesday Prime Minister David Cameron is set to unveil plans at the World Islamic Economic Forum in London for the government to issue £200m in Sharia compliant bonds, known as sukuk, making Britain the first non-Muslim country to do so. Indeed the UK is also the first non-Muslim country to host the forum.
Sukuk is an investment that doesn’t pay ‘riba’ (interest) because riba is considered amongst the Seven heinous sins of Islam. Despite this the returns on investments are remarkably pegged to international interest rates like LIBOR, though this draws disapproval from some Islamic clerics.
Sukuk compliant investment can work a number of ways. One is a pre-determined appreciated value at the end of the term e.g. you buy for £100 and you get back £110 in 2 years. Another is that you invest money and the borrower pays what amounts to rent on the investment. Again this is because riba cannot be paid and because money in Islam can only measure value, it cannot have value of its own. Another popular method is to have profit generated by an underlying asset.
These investments are most certainly on the Prime Minister’s mind as he plans to say in his speech “When Islamic finance is growing 50% faster than traditional banking and when global Islamic investments are set to grow to £1.3 trillion by 2014, we want to make sure a big proportion of that new investment is made here in Britain. For years people have been talking about creating an Islamic bond – or Sukuk – outside the Islamic world, but it’s just never quite happened, changing that is a question of pragmatism and political will. And here in Britain we’ve got both.”
Cameron is not totally honest in the above statement. When he says that change is a question of pragmatism he means selling out Britain’s traditionally Christian values, and when he says it’s about political will he means he’s decided to do it and the rest of my coalition had better go along with it.
From a purely business perspective though it is pragmatic, but that ignores all the baggage that will be brought in with sukuk, particularly the concept that as Islamic investment it can only by judged by Sharia courts. To this the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in its daily writes: “For the Sukuk to remain Sharia compliant, it necessarily surrenders itself away from the jurisdiction of the UK civil courts to the Islamic courts.”
Chancellor George Osborne though certainly sees the pragmatic side. Writing in the Financial Times he said: “While others in the western world resist change, this government is embracing it: banging the drum for British businesses, seeking out new markets, welcoming overseas investment with open arms.”
But not just UKIP have expressed a more cautious tone. Paul Goodman, journalist and former Conservative MP wrote on Conservative Home: “sharp and urgent questions and concerns aired in Parliament when the power to issue such bonds was first mooted have never been addressed. Those questions and concerns were aired by the then Conservative opposition to a Labour government which seemed indifferent to the fact that it was proposing to sell Britain to Islam. Now those Conservatives are in power and are proposing to do just that – and their own questions still remain unanswered.”
Andrea Williams of Christian Concern said: “This is terribly short sighted. Sharia finance is part of a wider system of Islamic law, a system which benefits Muslims over non-Muslims. It is well known that Sharia law contains some fundamental inequalities, one of which is that between Muslims and non-Muslims. The Prime Minister needs to encourage investments which benefit all people, not just those of one religious group. He seems to be completely unaware that welcoming this kind of investment will give Sharia law a foothold in the UK.”
Alas the Prime Minister seems to be completely unaware of quite a number of things. He certainly does not comprehend that the ultimate goal of Islam is complete takeover and his attempts of appeasement and benevolence will not make him popular but simply see him viewed as weak.
Imagine if Christians started making a lot of noise about Biblicaly compliant investing. They would be told that if they don’t like the market place the way it is they don’t have to participate. Even in faith-strong America “many hedge fund managers” writes Jessica Matthews of Cambridge Associates in P&I News, “need to be convinced that there is demand for screened versions of their investment strategies offered as a separate share class or in a separate account format”.
While Islam boldly pushes on it is the Christian value system, the foundation of the nation that is being superseded by Sharia. As Daily Mail writer Melanie Phillips writes on her blog: “The reality – counter-intuitive as it may seem to some – is that individual liberty is only upheld and safeguarded by legal, social and cultural traditions embedded in the ethics of the Bible. Indeed, western liberty is unique in the world precisely because of those biblical roots.”
Put another way, the very values to which we hold dear as far as basic liberty, rule of law, judicial protections etc. are based on Biblical values. To allow Sharia a foothold in the financial system, and by default the legal system, puts those values at risk.
Yet progressive thinkers like Cameron, generally with the full-support of the left, march forward with the banner of Islam. It’s always been curious to me how the left aligns itself with the Islamic culture when the two advocate a very different values system. Aside from their hatred of Christianity, I believe that the idea of riba is a conjoining force. Both Islam and Socialism see profit and the production of wealth as unjust in different ways and for different reasons. Thus the idea of Sharia concepts allows lefty thinkers to ‘sanctify’ the activities they always wanted to do anyway and justify getting rich in the name of spreading equality.
Britain is headed down a street with no u-turns. If things go beyond a certain point there will be no turning back. As it is, fixing the Sharia mess is akin to cleaning a computer hard drive infested with malware. The politicians for the most part have lost their bearings, one must trust in the people to set things on a better course.
