Milestones finance islam

Milestones finance islam 
Les Islamic financial institutions "weigh" about 230 billion dollars, or forty times more than in 1982 (1). Like Citibank, which since 1996 had established its own subsidiary in Bahrain Islamic, most major Western financial institutions are now engaged in such activities in the form of subsidiaries, "Islamic windows" or financial products for Muslim customers. Symbol of the integration of Islamic finance in the global economy, there is even a "Dow Jones Islamic market."
This may seem paradoxical, Islam is perceived by some as incompatible with the "new world order" that took place at the end of the Cold War (2). How to explain, in the era of globalized finance, institutions that reject the "wear" to integrate into a system based on the interests and techniques being updated with the awakening of political Islam know their golden years, even though political Islam run out of steam (3)?
A modernized Islamic banking took shape in the 1970s, at the crossroads of the rise of pan-Islamism and the oil boom. The Six Day War (June 1967) had in fact marked the beginning of the decline of the movement Nasser, pan-Arab and secular, and paved the way for regional hegemony of Saudi Arabia, under the banner of pan-Islamism. The establishment in 1970, the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) grouping the Muslim countries put economic precepts of Islam to the agenda. The Islamic economic research institutes proliferated.
In 1974, at the top of Lahore, the OIC decided in the wake of the quadrupling of oil prices, creating the Islamic Development Bank. Based in Jeddah, the institution laid the foundations for a support system based on Islamic principles. In 1975, the Dubai Islamic Bank was the first Islamic private bank in the making. An international association of Islamic banks was created to establish standards and defend common interests. In 1979, Pakistan became the first country to declare the Islamization of the entire banking sector. He was followed in 1983 by Sudan and Iran.
It was then up to the Muslim jurists to adapt a pre-capitalist tradition to the needs of contemporary society. For if religion showed itself favorable to trade (profession practiced by the Prophet Muhammad), condemned the gains from financial "pure." The Koran says for example that, despite their apparent similarities, the profits generated by trade are fundamentally different from those generated by the loans (Sura 2, verse 275).
Islam prohibits riba in particular. The word, generally translated as "usury", literally means "increase". But his interpretation has always been controversial: for some, riba refers to all forms of "fixed interest", for others the word means only excessive interest. Although some religious authorities - including the current Sheikh of Al Azhar in Egypt - have proclaimed the legality of certain types of interest, many scholars continue to adopt a restrictive interpretation.
Without challenging the principle of compensation for money loaned, the Islamic tradition is opposed to the aspect of "fixed and predetermined" of interest, with its implications for equity and potential for exploitation of the borrower. Islam calls for more equitable sharing of risks and benefits (4). In the early days of Islam, the commonly applied form of financing was to involve the lender and borrower, an easy dealer financed an operation conducted by a contractor, and share profits and losses equally. This form of associative finance - that will inspire the sponsorship system under French law - is a logic similar to that of venture capital popularized by the "new economy".
The theoreticians of Islamic finance thought such a system more responsive to economic needs of the Islamic world and the moral demands of religion. Indeed, whereas the bank emphasizes traditional owners of capital or property may be mortgaged, finance association gives a chance to dynamic entrepreneurs but not wealthy. The system would also allow those who, for religious reasons, preferred to previously hoarding, to integrate the productive economic circuits. Islam also add a charitable dimension: by managing the "Zakat Fund" (5) and their own donations, the banks had to fight against poverty and exclusion.