Guest blog from Mohamed Tarraf, CSC research intern:
Once again, London’s reputation as the “Islamic financial centre of Europe” has been reinforced with the launching of the UK’s first prepaid MasterCard.
The fact that it’s a prepaid card means that the customer pays no interest. In turn, the Cordoba Financial Group doesn’t earn any interest on any unspent credit “as you can neither earn nor pay interest under sharia law."
The Launch of this new service and the existence of more than 20 Islamic financial institutions with more than 30,000 customers do indeed make the UK the largest Islamic financial hub in Europe. To highlight the rapid growth and potential of Islamic banking in Europe, Nicholas Moy, Chairman of the Cordoba Financial Group, said that the company would expand into France and Germany “in due course.”
Chris McCafferty MP, founder of Friends for Islam, unsurprisingly during such dire fiscal times, emphasized the current financial hardships by saying:
“The issue of borrowing and credit cards poses a financial problem, especially for young people who want to set up a home. This is an excellent way to pay with a credit card without breaking the rules."
The Islamic financial industry is proving to be robust during the current economic slowdown. Cordoba Financial Group CEO Ahmed Suleiman said:
“The trust we have garnered from our sharia advisers is something that money can't buy, as is the trust we are going to engender with our customers."
It's just a pre-paid cash card - the name, Cordoba, has a rather creepy 'we're going to get back el-Andalus!' ring about it.
Whats creepy about Al Andalus and Cordoba, obviously the person doesnt know their history or that how much Europe has to be thankful to Cordoba Spain.
As far as the product is concerned sounds something that we can at longlast boast about a sbeing a very good product for community and social cohesion
Rageh Omar made a documentary about 'Islamic Europe' in which, in front of the camera, he actually closed his eyes and clenched his fist in anguish as he described the wresting of Spain back from the grip of Islam by the Christians. It is well known that al-Qaida regularly includes Spain on its list of regions that rightly belong within dar al-Islam and that it has ambitions one day to forcibly get it back. I won't get bogged down in the over-inflated claims of how much Europe owes to Islam, per se, intellectually, as opposed to a middle eastern culture that pre-dated it, but Islamic Spain was a pretty miserable place to live if you were a non-Muslim.
This is a great development. Products that comply with Shariah aren't just good for Muslims but also for other people who wish to avoid investment in industries related to Pornography, Armaments, Tobacco etc.
There's a lot of misundetstanding about Islamic Finance in Britain, a lot of people think that only Muslims can hold these products but I'm not a Muslim but I hold a savings account with the Islamic Bank of Britain and I get a pretty competitive return as well!
Hadnt realised that Anonymous was around during Islamic spain - were they also around living during bthe Spanish inquisition
don't think anyone of us was around in Islamic Spain or during the Spanish inquisition - that's why we use historical records e.g. about the massacre of jews in Malaga in 1066. Muslim dhimmi laws are well known (the penalty for not paying the jizya was death and it was usually an onerous burden for the poor.)There has been a lot of romanticising of the convivencia - and bad as it was, the inquisition killed relatively few.
Does the Cordoba have any link to the Cordoba foundation - the front for the Muslim Brotherhood in the UK?