Why? An interest-free loan with no late payment fees sounds good to me. Of course, they require a higher down payment than they do if they charge interest, other terms and conditions apply, TANSTAAFL, blah blah blah.
Do you also have a problem with it if your grocery store sells kosher and halal foods?
Because our banking system is clearly such a paragon of morality.
Because they have money and want stuff we have (or vice versa), and not trading with people doesn’t always help in stopping them from doing things you don’t like. It hasn’t worked with Cuba, now, has it?
How are the Iranian bankers getting their money to take over the world, then?
Either you can make money doing Islamic banking, or you can’t. If you can, then non-terrorists could do it. If you can’t, then the terrorists won’t be able to make enough money doing it to take over the world. Unless you think the terrorists are smarter than we are, and can make money at something that non-terrorists can’t?
Don’t think our banks do business the way they do because it’s some sacred tradition to them. If they could make more money doing things some other legal way, they would.
Simply go to the University Bank of Ann Arbor and ask for a housing loan. The money originates in Michigan and stays in Michigan. The loans are not written in Arabic. Even if they were written in Arabic, that would not be an example of “going into terrorism” any more than loans written in German, Yiddish, Italian, or other languages in banks serving ethnic communities in the U.S. were going to terrorism (or to fund various Bunden, Zionist plots, or the Mafia). (I realize that since part of the banking system requires donations to charity and that some charities, somewhere, have been fronts for terrorist organizations, Ms. Brighton cannot be bothered to distinguish between one charity and another, but until she provides evidence that a particular charity is actually sending funds to a terrorist outfit, (an activity that the FBI had a field day breaking up between 2002 and 2004), then she is simply spouting unthinking hatred based on her hatred of Islam.
What is your basis for claiming that she knows “banking laws inside and out”? She claims to know a lot of things that she has clearly gotten wrong, whether through ignorance or malice, and I see no reason to believe that she knows more about banking than she does Islam–of which she is clearly ignorant.
This is pure bullshit. The initial contracts probably had to be vetted by a Sharia scholar at some point; it is simply false that every single contract is being written in some unavailable language mysteriously produced by someone in Iran. Go to the University Bank, again, and look at their system. They publicly announce who has provided their Sharia consulting, (it is an outfit in Virginia).
This is wrong, as well. That system is not permitted to charge interest, (in the same way that Jews and Christians are not permitted to charge “Use”), so when a person needs a housing loan, the bank buys the house outright, then sells it back to the person on a monthly installment plan that repays more than the original investment. If one wants to quibble about the semantics of the situation, one may choose to do so, yet the effect is the same as the typical American mortgage, with the buyer taking possession of the house before the buyer has completed all the payments while the bank earns enough profit to finance other houses. (Well, there is one difference–repossession and foreclosure are reduced significantly in such transactions because the Islamic bank is not permitted to retake possession simply for a couple of missed payments.)
The charity aspect is a separate event. Since almsgiving is rated highly in Islam and the bank is going to make money without expending labor, a certain percentage of the bank’s profits must be set aside, in advance, to be given to charity. That charitable donation is spelled out at the time the loan is negotiated and the bank is compelled by contractual law to honor it. If Ms. Brighton is claiming what you have posted, then she is lying.
Why are you, (or Ms. Brighton), accusing everyone who is Muslim of being a terrorist? She has provided no evidence of this claim you you have certainly provided no evidence of this claim.
Ms. Brighton’s claims that the “Iraninans” are behind the entire Islamic Banking situation is ludicrous and should be a clear indicator to anyone with an ounce of perspicacity that she is just the latest in a long tradition of xenophobic Conspiracy Theorists.
As to not getting interest, the Islamic banks are permitted to earn a profit and they have shareholders who profit in due course. The arrangement avoids the overt payment of “interest,” but the money is not being sucked out of the world to be hoarded in Iran. No one is going to be compelled to bank with an Islamic bank, (in every example of Islamic banking that I have found, the Islamic bank is a wholly owned subsidiary of a larger bank still doing business in the traditional European and North American ways).
If all this was truly illegal, Ms. Brighton should be out filing lawsuits to compel the various state and Federal banking regulators to examine and shut down the practices. That she confines herself to talking to rightwing nut crowds such as the FRC, (for a modest speaking fee, of course), while taking no action, herself, should be the clearest indication that she is either a loon or a xenophobe for profit–or both.
BTW:
You appear to have misread my comments. You may be just curious, but Ms. Brighton is clearly engaged in hate-warped distortion.
Here is another of many video’s of people that understand Sharia. I have been looking into it but since I don’t understand the Muslim culture I rely on people that do. The main thing is we should learn what it is and why we are allowing something this odd to infiltrate our banks.
I don’t read Arabic and neither do US bankers. That is why they need Muslim Scholars to write and explain these bank transactions. I don’t think people are against Sharia because of hate. I think they are warning us that this could become a problem for our country.
Why would you think that? She’s spouting nonsense. Why would you believe a random nutjob on YouTube unless it aligns with your preconceived notions?
I have no problem believing that.
You clearly don’t know that, and it’s demonstrably untrue in many/most cases.
She’s making demonstrably wrong claims, and I see no reason to put any faith in her unsupported and clearly incorrect statements. She’s wrong. You’re wrong. I don’t know what is the clearest way to explain that to you.
Here is another good video spoken by a woman who grew up under Sharia. She is now a US citizen and I find it interesting to hear her take on it. Is Sharia what we want to bring into our free society?
The banking is wrong because it is not our way of banking. In Joy’s video when she asks the Sheik to explain Sharia he says, “Sharia is the air we breath and the water we drink”. ??? What does that mean? Why is money more important then freedom?
I know we are debating here but other then calling my claims false and me trying to show you evidence that it is true I don’t think we can get any further unless you open your mind a little. I can’t exactly post the texts of Sharia banking law but I will try to find them in English. Then good luck trying to make sense of them unless you understand Arabic. This Sharia banking is only post 9-11. Before that all our banking was done our way.
Check this woman out. She has a powerful message and she is non profit and just being informative and not hateful. She has also the experience of being on both sides that we do not.
You forgot to add the word purport in the appropriate place in that sentence.
Aha! There’s the biggest problem right there. You don’t get–I’d say you refuse to get, but that’s just my opinion–that there is no single Muslim culture. You apparently also don’t understand that there are differences, serious differences, between the two major branches of Islam. One of those differences is in the interpretation of Shari’a.
Why aren’t you railing against all those nice American financiers offering 0% interest on car loans and furniture loans? Or is it okay because, according to you, they’re not Muslim?
Oh, get off it. If I were a betting man, I’d happily bet that you can find some US bankers who speak Arabic. Finance in general and international finance in particular are not exactly unknown concepts.
Like I said upthread, I’d be against enforcing any kind of sharia laws or court systems. I think that was discussed in Canada at one point, although I don’t remember if anything came of it. Offering it as an optional banking product is a different subject and it sounds like an acceptable choice in a free society.
You’re wrong about this, which has been explained over and over again. And being different doesn’t make it wrong. That’s not even a sensible objection.
I don’t know. Why do you think we should force people to bank a certain way instead of letting them exercise the freedom to follow their consciences?
I’m all for keeping an open mind, but this sounds like a garbage-in, garbage-out situation.
How do you determine which people understand Muslim culture, and which do not? How do you know that the people in the videos you are linking to know more about Islam than, say, tomndebb? Before you started looking into Muslim culture, did you have an idea about what you expected to find? Do the experts you listen to tend to say things that re-enforce what you expected to find?
And here’s American Finance House/Lariba, which has, as it points out, been in business since 1987, and Bank of Whittier, which has been in business since 1982, both of which are pre-9/11.
No. That video is of one woman who grew up under one version of Sharia that was culturally determined by where she lived. Do you find the rantings of Gabriel Longo, author of Spoiled Priest, to be a good representation of Catholicism? How about the silly stuff that Jack Chick publishes from Alberto Rivera, who purports to have been a Jesuit priest? Rather than rely on anecdotes from people who have personal issues with an institution or religion, why do you not take the time to find an objective analysis of the situation?
Why do you twist his words to throw in a rejection of freedom that he does not express? Saying that the philosophy behind religious law is “the air we breath and the water we drink” is nothing more than saying that their religion pervades their society, (just as Christianity pervaded Europe and, to a lesser extent, North America, up until the eighteenth century). What is different between that and the loons running around calling the U.S. a “Christian nation” with the insistence that we stamp out secular approaches to law?
You don’t make any claims except that things are “bad” because they are “different.” A gratuitous assertion may be gratuitously denied. If you actually presented a coherent argument to discuss, I would be happy to discuss actual points. In fact, looking back over the thread, I see that I have actually posted information while you simply post links to videos of Muslim haters ranting in front of audiences predisposed to hate Muslims.
And, as noted, you are wrong that there was no Islamic banking in the West prior to the WTC/Pentagon attacks. It dates back as far as the Reagan era and the Whittier bank’s web page includes the standard American text, “Bank of Whittier, C.A. Member FDIC . Equal Housing Lender.”
As for Wafa Sultan, what makes you think that she is being honest, not being hateful, or that she is not speaking for profit? Again, compare her words with those of Longo and Rivera. Beyond that, of course, is that even to the extent that she is speaking the truth as she sees it, she was living in one of the more restrictive countries in the world with a strong Wahabbist tradition supporting its opposition to Israel. There is no evidence that she understands how different forms of Sharia are implemented in other societies. The very fact that she speaks as though there is only one form of all-encompassing Sharia indicates that even if she is well intentioned, her words are not sufficiently accurate to be accepted.
Ah, would that be the bisexual cheater?
Since it’s late, I only have Wiki’s article on the Family Research Council (the anti-Sharia cite you linked to seems to be run by them). Not exactly a non-biased group.
Wikipedia is useless for some topics and will not cover anything dicey or that they can get sued over. I keep saying that it is ok as a reference but you need more then one reference.
Watch this and then if you think he is funny watch a few more. I am not using a Sharia bank anymore and our town is trying to kick out the Bank of Sharia. Yes, I am the one that dated a bisexual cheater. Thanks for reminding me of it. Mighty kind of you…
You keep linking to these useless videos on Youtube as if you think they provide evidence of something. They’re essentially someone ranting on the internet, with no substance or research to support their wild accusations. They are certainly less helpful than a Wiki cite.
Not All That Bright- It ain’t over till I say it’s over. You are annoying me by following me around and flaming me and contributing nothing to any debate except some put down. I know what your moniker says but if you don’t mind I’m here to debate not get into petty fights with trolls. Take your dimness and go find someone else to bother. I mean it. Aol message boards are a great place to flame people if that is all you do.
This is another excellent video that both makes me want to laugh and cry. I have already voiced my opinions that the building of a Mosque on Ground Zero is an offense. I have received no support from any of my fellow Americans. It will be opened and the party will be on September 11th of next year.
Tom, I know I said you won. I just got tired of fighting off point. I don’t want to debate priests, Jack Chick… Come on!!I could find nothing for your cite “Bank of Whittier, C.A. Member FDIC . Equal Housing Lender.”
So I find a mosque on Ground Zero offensive and you don’t. You think it’s fine that they are rubbing our noses in 911. I am no Rhodes scholar but I do feel that this is wrong. Our country would never build anything as an insult to a country we terrorized. I sent an email to Wafia and am waiting on a reply as to who funds her. I will release the details with her consent only.
No one other then you took the time to listen to her and that is a shame. There are many women on this board that should take an interest in what she has to say. If she is a sham I will be the first to admit it. It takes time to get to some of these people.
I’d like to reasearch your cite and stay on topic and not go off into tangents. Can you leave a link? Thanks!
