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A Caliphate of Toxic Assets
Of particular interest to those of you who dabble -- or work -- in financial investing. For the rest of us, it's good to understand one of the major weapons employed by those who choose to be our enemies. Click on the title to go read the whole thing.
When a pro-terrorist organization announces its intention to launch a financial jihad against the West, it is well worth learning their methods. More significant than the promotion of a religious pseudo-financial scheme is the possibility their largely unregulated practices could release a new wave of toxic assets into the wider economy and trigger a series of small-scale Enrons.

The Muslim organization Hizb Ut Tahrir capitalizes on Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna's 20th century derivative, encouraging followers to build a parallel financial structure. Al-Banna envisioned the resultant Shari'a-compliant finance as a “back door” into Western financial markets and institutions through which to supplant liberty and prosperity with Islam. Muslim clerics including MB spiritual leader Yusuf al-Qaradawi promote Shari'a finance as generally safer than Western investments, a diversification method to steady personal assets -- and a stable economic system that should replace capitalism. Call it “financial replacement theology,” if you wish.

In July, Hizb Ut Tahrir plans to launch its U.S. arm with a huge Chicago “Khalifah conference” heralding the coming Caliphate and global Islamic supremacism. After 9/11, Germany and Sweden outlawed Hizb Ut Tahrir. In July 2005, Pakistan's then-president Pervez Musharaf warned Britain not to tolerate its continued U.K. presence. But in the U.S., Hizb Ut Tahrir has proudly announced intentions to replace capitalism with Islam.

Major banks from Citigroup, HSBC, Chase, Bank of America and Lloyds TSB -- probably unaware of the etymology of Islamic finance -- established subsidiaries offering Shari'a-compliant products. Mutual funds at Principal Financial Group, UBS, Amana Funds and SEI Investments, among others, followed suit. Especially late last year as the devastating toll of sub-prime mortgage lending mounted, clients were assured that Islamic banking -- in many respects a dangerous financial fad -- was much safer than other banks and investment houses.

Yet bad economic news has not escaped the supposedly secure Islamic investing sector. Islamic securities can also (like all other asset classes) go into default, moreover. Holders of East Cameron Partners LP's “safe,” asset-backed Islamic bonds (sukuk) now line up before a Louisiana bankruptcy judge with all the other hapless creditors of the Texas-based Easter Cameron Oil and Gas Co. that filed for Chapter 11 reorganization last October.
Posted by: BrerRabbit 2009-06-29
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=273171