Islamic

index

Fox News Reports

“Shariah-compliant banking, sometimes called Islamic banking, is growing in popularity in the Western and Islamic worlds. But critics say American interest in the system at a time of economic crisis is opening the door to increased Islamic influence in the American banking system. Worse yet, some fear the banks may be helping to finance international terrorism.

In Shariah-compliant banking, lenders may not charge interest and investors cannot make money from forbidden industries like gambling, alcohol, pork and pornography. Selling debt, devising derivatives and short selling are also prohibited, and investments must be closely tied to actual assets.In the U.S., the Dow Jones Islamic Index tracks Shariah-compliant companies and funds, and funds have sprung up like the Amana Mutual Funds Trust and the Azzad Asset Management.

Islamic index operations will be completed and will be operational soon, said Hüseyin Erkan, chairman of the Istanbul Stock Exchange.

Today, there are hundreds of Islamic indexes created by Dow Jones and other stock exchanges, said Erkan. “However, these are companies of big economies such as Europe, the United States or even Japan. We barely see any companies from Islamic countries in those indexes. We met with index makers and told them ‘what if you created an index where only the shares of companies from the Islamic world could trade.’ Their reaction to our suggestion was a positive one, they just requested some data from us to enable such project and we said yes.”

“Turkey is one of the largest markets among the Islamic capital markets. It may even be the biggest. If such an investment fund would be created, Turkey would be the country to benefit the most from the situation. I believe this operation will be completed in the upcoming period and the Islamic index will become operational,” according to Erkan.