Tel-Chai Nation

Rep. Allen West writes on Investor's Business Daily about the serious dangers of shariah finance, since it can serve funding terrorism:

...Shariah finance is not just an innocent form of free-market capitalism. Shariah finance was conceived and is practiced as one of the key instruments of the radical Islamist movement in its struggle against the West.

An astounding $1.5 trillion is currently invested in Shariah finance, and that amount is expected to grow dramatically in the years ahead — thanks largely to the ever-increasing coffers of oil-exporting nations ruled by Shariah, including Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Scrutiny, however, is something Shariah-compliant finance has never had to endure from American policymakers. Shariah finance is almost completely alien from the standards of disclosure and transparency customary in the U.S. and other Western financial markets.

A small cadre of Shariah advisers — Muslim authorities on Shariah — determine capital and credit flows with little, if any, of the accountability at the heart of federal and state securities laws. This gives rise to unique risks for Western firms engaging in Shariah-compliant finance, including racketeering, anti-trust, and securities and consumer fraud.

Shariah advisers to the banks are themselves the real problems with Shariah-compliant finance. All too often, they are outright jihadists with ties to terrorism. In fact, the most prominent Shariah scholar in the financial world — a Pakistani named Mufti Taqi Usmani — sits on the Shariah advisory boards of some of America's best-known banking institutions.

It's disgusting if American banks are willing to do business with fiends who work in sharia finance, and something needs to be done to curb that kind of awfulness.

Hat tip: Doug Ross.

Labels: House of Saud, iran, islam, terrorism, United States, war on terror