Sharia Finance - Infidels Financing Their Own Murder

From Frank Gaffney in the Washington Times:

The U.S. Treasury Department is submitting to Shariah - the seditious religio-political-legal code authoritative Islam seeks to impose worldwide under a global theocracy.

As reported in this space last week, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Robert Kimmitt set the stage with his recent visit to Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich Persian Gulf states. His stated purpose was to promote the recycling of petrodollars in the form of foreign investment here.

Evidently, the price demanded by his hosts is that the U.S. government get with the Islamist financial program. While in Riyadh, Mr. Kimmitt announced: "The U.S. government is currently studying the salient features of Islamic banking to ascertain how far it could be useful in fighting the ongoing world economic crisis."

"Islamic banking" is a euphemism for a practice better known as "Shariah-Compliant Finance (SFC)." And it turns out that this week the Treasury will be taking officials from various federal agencies literally to school on SFC.

The department is hosting a half-day course entitled "Islamic Finance 101" on Thursday at its headquarters building. Treasury's self-described "seminar for the policy community" is co-sponsored with the leading academic promoters of Shariah and SCF in the United States: Harvard University Law School's Project on Islamic Finance. At the very least, the U.S. government evidently hopes to emulate Harvard's success in securing immense amounts of Wahhabi money in exchange for conforming to the Islamists' agenda. Like Harvard, Treasury seems utterly disinterested in what Shariah actually is, and portends.

Unfortunately, such submission - the literal meaning of "Islam" - is not likely to remain confined long to the Treasury or its sister agencies. Thanks to the extraordinary authority conferred on Treasury since September, backed by the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the department is now in a position to impose its embrace of Shariah on the U.S. financial sector. The nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Treasury's purchase of - at last count - 17 banks and the ability to provide, or withhold, funds from its new slush-fund can translate into unprecedented coercive power.

Concerns in this regard are only heightened by the prominent role Assistant Treasury Secretary Neel Kashkari will be playing in "Islamic Finance 101." Mr. Kashkari, the official charged with administering the TARP fund, will provide welcoming remarks to participants. Presumably, in the process, he will convey the enthusiasm about Shariah-Compliant Finance that appears to be the current party line at Treasury.

As this enthusiasm for SCF ramps up in Washington officialdom, it is worth recalling a lesson from "across the pond." Earlier this year, the head of the Church of England, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, provoked a brief but intense firestorm of controversy with his declaration that it was "unavoidable" that Shariah would be practiced in Britain. Largely unremarked was the reason he gave for such an ominous forecast: The U.K. had already accommodated itself to Shariah-Compliant Finance.

This statement provides an important insight for the incumbent U.S. administration and whomever succeeds it: Shariah-Compliant Finance serves as a leading edge of the spear for those seeking to insinuate Shariah into Western societies.

Regrettably, SCF is not the only instrument of the stealth jihad by which Shariah-promoting Islamists are seeking to achieve "parallel societies" here and elsewhere in the West. The British experience is instructive on this score, too. Her Majesty's government has allowed the establishment of at least five Shariah courts to hear (initially) family law cases. Polygamists in the U.K. can get welfare for each of their wives (as long as all the marriages beyond the first were performed overseas).

Thus far, we in this country may not have reached the point where evidence of this sort of creeping Shariah is so manifest. But Treasury's accommodation to SCF demonstrates that we are on the same trajectory - the one ordained and demanded by the promoters of Shariah, one to which we serially accommodate ourselves at our extreme peril.

The most dangerous thing about Sharia Finance is that it dictates the giving of Zakat; donation to Islamic Charity. 

From Wikiepedia:

Zakāh "alms for the poor" (Arabic: زكاة‎ IPA: [zækæːh] is the Islamic principle of giving a percentage of one's income to charity. It is often compared to the system of tithing and alms but unlike these older systems, it serves principally as the welfare contribution to poor and deprived people in the Muslim lands, although others may have a rightful share. 

It is the duty of the state not just to collect it; but to distribute it fairly as well.

Zakat is one of the Five Pillars of Islam.

It is an obligation on Muslims to pay 1/40th (2.5%) of the wealth which they have had for a full lunar year, 2.5% of goods used for trade, and 5% or 10% of certain type of harvests depending on irrigation. Exempt from Zakat are a person's house and personal transportation.

The reality is the prohibition against the paying of interest in Islamic Finance is not real. In Islamic Finance, the bank buys the home, and you pay them rent on it for a pre-determined number of years, at which point, the home is yours. Over the years, the bank makes money by charging you more rent (in total) on the home than if you had bought the home outright with cash.

There is no fundamental distinction between that and our system of finance, wherein the bank buys the home for you and you pay the principle pluspre-determined interest.

So, if there is no difference between Islamic Finance and our system of Finance in that way, then why is it that Muslims want us to "submit" to Sharia-compliant finance? In my opinion, the primary reason is, precisely, that the institution of Zakat, which, as Wikipedia makes clear, is Islamic taxation.

Follow the money. So goes the wise dictum.

The Muslim world wants America to pay taxes to Islamic Charities. And, let us be clear, Islamic Charities are known to finance the Jihad. And, of course, that would be the Jihad against Infidels like you and me.

They want us to pay for them to kill us. Do you understand?

By the way, I ran an article on the subject of Sharia Finance by Ilana Friedman yesterday. Today, I am running this article from Frank Gaffney. Both Friedman and Gaffney are known to be brilliant students of the problems we face with the Jihad.

Yet, neither dealwith Zakat, which is the primary affront we face with regard to Islamic Finance.

The purpose of Sharia-compliant finance is to get Infidels to pay for their own murder. If our best minds do not understand, or are not clear about this fact, then we are in trouble.

By the way, let us take note of one other thing here. Zakat is, in its stated essence, Socialism. Indeed, many Islamist parties in the Muslim world are Socialist. 

As Wikipedia states, Zakat is, "the welfare contribution to poor and deprived people in the Muslim lands," and, "It is the duty of the state not just to collect it; but to distribute it fairly as well." 

That fits very well with Barack Obama's plans for America, doesn't it? Whether he means for his economic policy to be Sharia-compliant or not, the temptation would be there for him to make agreements with Muslim countries, to do what he has already states he intends to do, and to call it Islamic Finance. 

After all, what could it hurt, as long as no one is pointing out the dangers of Zakat being diverted to Jihad?