Sharia and business

Submitted by Mitchforth (United States), Apr 7, 2009 at 12:54

I am not an expert in Islamic finance, but my understanding is that Sharia prohibits moneylending for interest and there are further prohibitions on gambling which are interpreted to prohibit certain investment vehicles.

Any big institutional investor, whether it's the sovereign wealth fund of Dubai or the Harvard University Endowment is likely to negotiate custom deal documents for its transactions and technical compliance with Sharia rules on investment is something investment banks and lawyers are happy to arrange in order to access the substantial pools of capital controlled by Muslims.

The operative point is that, even if Koh made comments about Sharia, he certainly was not advocating for legally mandated burqas or honor killing as a defense to murder.

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