IN THIS ISSUE
Fairbanks Medical Ethics Lecture
Caring for Your Muslim Patient
By Shahid Athar, MD, FACP, FACE
Past President and past Chair, Medical Ethics
Islamic Medical Association of North America
At Methodist Hospital, Indianapolis
Petticrew Auditorium
November 29, 2006 12-30-to 1-30 PM
Topics to be covered: concepts in Islamic health care, end of life issues, transplantation, examining a female Muslim patient, termination of pregnancy, assisted reproduction and more.
Public invited. No cost
The Muslim Alliance of Indiana (MAI) will be launching an online yellow pages listing Muslim Hoosier owned businesses. Each business will receive a free listing on the online yellow pages that will help Muslim Hoosiers to find Muslim owned businesses in their area. To receive a free listing in the yellow pages businesses should send the following information to siddiquisa@gmail.com:
Name of business:
Name of contact:
Address:
Telephone:
Email:
Website:
Type of business:
Services offered:
Muslim Alliance of Indiana (MAI) congratulates Imam W.D. Muhammad on receiving an Honorary Doctorate Degree from Indianapolis area Martins University. MAI also published a congratulatory message in the souvenir program to commemorate the event. "We appreciate Martin University recognizing Imam Mohammed's great work on behalf of American Muslims as well as Americans in general." stated Shariq Siddiqui, Executive Director of MAI. "It always makes us happy when a institution like Martin University recognizes the great contribution of the leader of American Muslims, Imam Mohammed, by awarding him an honorary degree," stated Dr Ibad Ansari, President of MAI.
"We would encourage Muslims from across Indiana to thank Martin's University for their recognition of Imam Mohammed's work," stated Alia Shah, Director of Outreach of MAI.
Warith Deen Muhammad (born Wallace D. Muhammad on October 30, 1933) is an influential American Muslim leader. He is now known as Warith Deen Muhammad or Imam W.D. Mohammed. He is the son of Clara and Elijah Muhammad . Elijah Muhammad, also referred to as the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, was the leader of the Nation of Islam from 1934 to 1975, an organization which preaches Black nationalism. Elijah Muhammad died on February 26, 1975.
After his father's death, Warith Deen Muhammad was accepted by followers of the Nation of Islam as their leader. He brought about many reforms, which brought the followers of the Nation of Islam closer to mainstream Islam. He renamed his organization a number of times. He is now the leader of a new project called The Mosque Cares, and most of his followers make up a portion of the worldwide Muslim community and have accepted Islam proper. He also changed the spelling of his last name from the Nation of Islam's preferred "Muhammad" to the more accepted "Mohammed."
He rejected the literal meaning of his father's theology and Black-separatist views. For example, the Nation of Islam taught that Black people were God's original people. With his new understanding, based on his life long study of the Holy Qu'ran and the life example of Prophet Mohammed of Arabia, he accepted whites as fellow worshippers and attempted to forge closer ties with mainstream Muslim communities, including Latino Muslims. There are an estimated 7 to 10 million Muslims in the United States of America.
A number of dissident groups resisted the changes in the Nation of Islam. Among these was Louis Farrakhan who announced a revival of the Nation of Islam name for his group in 1981.
W.D. Mohammed gave the first invocation in the U.S. Senate ever by a Muslim. In 1993 , he gave an Islamic prayer during the first Inaugural Interfaith Prayer Service of President Clinton, and again in 1997 at the second Interfaith Prayer Service.
Currently, Imam Warith Deen Mohammed is working on fostering positive interfaith dialogue through nationwide lecturing and involvement in the Focolare Movement. His message is no longer exclusively focused on the African American community; it is now inclusive of every race. His lectures are focused on both Muslim and non-Muslim audiences. He also is placing a great interest on the establishment of Muslim-owned businesses, schools, and communities in America.
On Saturday, November 18, 2006, State Senator Mike Delph met with the Muslim Alliance of Indiana (MAI) and Muslim Hoosiers from the Indianapolis area. Senator Delph represents has a long history of working with Muslim Hoosiers since his days on the staff of Representative Dan Burton. Senator Delph met with Muslims at an event hosted by Dr Haroon Qazi to learn about his Muslim constituents and their concerns. "We appreciate Senator Delph meeting with Muslim Hoosiers in an effort to learn more about our concerns and viewpoints on important upcoming legislative issues," stated Shariq Siddiqui, Executive Director of MAI.
Senator Delph has committed to lower property taxes, encourage Muslim prayer at the statehouse, host a Muslim Day at the Senate and work to portray an accurate image of Muslim Hoosiers. "I was encouraged by his statements that Muslim Hoosiers have the same rights as their fellow citizens and represent a positive part of Indiana," stated Dr Ibad Ansari, President of MAI.
Senator Delph was elected in a special election in 2005 and was re-elected to the Indiana Senate in November 2006. He was born in Indianapolis where he lives with his wife, Beth, and four daughters. He serves on the Economic Development & Technology
Governmental Affairs & Interstate Cooperation, Homeland Security, Utilities & Public Policy and Insurance & Financial Institutions Committees. He has a BA, MA and MPA from Indiana University and serves as a Captain in the United States Army Reserve.
The Muslim Alliance of Indiana Chamber of Commerce (MAICC) celebrated the inauguration of the Holiday Inn Express in Martinsville, Indiana. The hotel is owned by Muslim Hoosier investors and will bring over 20 jobs to the city of Martinsville. The $5 million hotel is the first project of the MAICC. The MAICC brings together Muslim entrepreneurs together to encourage economic development projects. The MAICC is not a formal chamber of commerce but simply seeks to connect Muslim Hoosiers together for the purpose of growing the number of Muslim Hoosier businesses in Indiana.
"This hotel represents one small way in which Muslim Hoosiers are helping Indiana's growth. This hotel represents investment into Martinsville of both money but 20 new jobs. The revenue this hotel will generate will increase the tax base of city, county and the state" stated Shariq Siddiqui, Executive Director of MAI.
"We appreciate the MAI Chamber of Commerce bringing the investors together to make this hotel a reality," stated Syed Ali, Managing Director of the new hotel.
"It is my hope that the MAI Chamber of Commerce continues to bring about such positive outcomes to help Muslim Hoosiers," stated Dr Ibad Ansari.
A cnew analysis of voting patterns in Virginia, where Republican incumbent George Allen narrowly lost to Democratic newcomer Jim Webb, reveals that the Muslim vote may have significantly contributed to the winning margin, which by last count was 9,326 votes.
The analysis was presented Monday at the National Press Club by Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, and Mukit Hossein, Director of its Center for Electoral Empowerment. According to Bray, 86% of all Muslims registered in Virginia or 51,350 voted in the election, 92% of which voted for Democratic candidates (47,092), and 8% voted for Republican (4,258). In addition, almost 8,000 Muslims voted for the first time. Mr. Bray said, "Since most Muslims voted for Democratic candidates, there is no doubt that Jim Webb owes his narrow victory, at least in part, to the pivotal Muslim voter turnout in Virginia." There were at least four other races where large Muslim voter turnouts were a critical factor in Democratic Party victories.
The Muslim American Society has worked hard in the last two years in getting large Muslim turnouts at the polls. This has been done through more extensive voter registration efforts, a greater educational campaign to inform Muslims about how to and for whom to vote, as well as to prep them on the issues. It has also improved efforts to mobilize Muslim voters on election day. By revamping its website and making it more interactive, the group was able to register some 42,000 new voters across the country. Special "candidates nights" were organized in Muslim centers and mosques that introduced potential Muslim voters to the candidates themselves. In northern Virginia, more than 1,200 people turned up at several of the candidates nights at local mosques to listen to candidates talk about the issues.
MAS has also set up "informational" meetings with local candidates so that they can be informed of what particular issues are on the minds of Muslim voters. More than six major issues were identified this election year, including erosion of civil rights, the need for immigration reform, affordable health care and foreign policy bias.
The electoral empowerment center, under the energetic direction of Hossain, who came aboard only several months ago, was able to identify the key states elections that needed particular attention. States that were targeted were those where senate races were close, which, in addition to Virginia, included Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, Tennessee, Missouri, and Washington. States with large Muslim populations, such as Texas, Florida, and New Jersey were also targeted.
In addition, Hossain was able to mobilize hundreds of Muslim volunteers at the polls and worked hard to see that many Muslim shut-ins could get to the polls. Taxicab drivers from across the metropolitan Washington area were mobilized to drive Muslims at no cost to polls in Virginia and elsewhere. He mentioned that there was "unprecedented enthusiasm in the community during and after the elections."
Packets of information were sent to Muslim centers in those states, outlining the issues that were important, how to register more voters, how to vote absentee, and specific information on local campaigns. MAS also sought coalitions with other local organizations. One group that was contacted was the former Howard Dean supporter group called DC for Democracy which, according to member Michael Shor, provided extensive numbers of volunteers to work with CEE in northern Virginia to getting out the Muslim vote.
Bray expressed his pride in the fact that Minnesota elected the first Muslim representative to Congress, believing Keith Ellison was the first of what would be many. "The Muslim community," Bray explained, "should not be a marginal player in U.S. elections." With 55 chapters in 38 states, it is "looking forward," as Bray says, "to the 2008 election."
When 300 or so Tri-State Muslims gathered at the Islamic Center on Monday to celebrate the holiday Eid al-Fitr, they stretched the Lincoln Avenue facility to its limits.
Worshippers filled the prayer hall in six tight rows, while others spilled into adjacent rooms.
If all goes as planned, next year's festivities won't be as cramped.
A fundraising campaign began this week for a new Islamic Center in Newburgh, and organizers hope to complete the first phase of the building by this time next year.
At Monday's gathering, Dr. Zahid Saqib of Carmi, Ill., asked for donations for the new facility, to be built on a five-acre site on Grimm Road just south of Indiana 66.
"This is all for the sake of Allah," Saqib told the group.
Groundbreaking is planned for late December or early January.
The new center will be built in three phases at an estimated total of $3.5 million.
To date, the campaign has raised about $100,000. Members plan to sell their existing center and use that money to help fund the construction, said Dr. Mohammad Hussain.
Phase 1, which will cost $1.2 million, will include a prayer hall about three times the size of the current one. It also will include a lobby and a separate building containing six classrooms for youth religious education.
Phase 2 will be the construction of a community center in a third building.
Phase 3 involves expanding the classroom building to turn it into a full-fledged parochial school.
The Lincoln Avenue center, in use since 1987, has become too small to accommodate the Tri-State's growing Muslim population which now includes 150 to 200 families, Saqib said.
A major issue that members had to work out was whether they could move at all.
Members consulted three Islamic scholars who said selling the building is permissible as long as all proceeds from the sale go toward building a new mosque, Hussain said.
Muslims have been active in international trade for centuries, according to Saadiah Mohamad.
More than five centuries ago, they had established trade routes throughout the Middle East, China, Malaysia and Indonesia, and were dealing in flax, sugar and other products, she said.
Five hundred years ago, they were drawing maps of the world, including America, to facilitate their trade, she said.
"Business and trade and globalization have had a long history with the Muslims," Mohamad told members of the Evansville Rotary Club on Tuesday.
And that interest in international trade today persists in Muslim countries such as Malaysia, which is seeking to improve trade with the U.S. through a Free Trade Agreement, Mohamad said.
Mohamad is an associate professor at Malaysia's largest university. She has been visiting Evansville on a Fulbright Scholarship this month. Her visit has been arranged by the Institute for Global Enterprise in Indiana at the University of Evansville.
Mohamad said Islam came into Malaysia in the 14th Century. The conversion to Islam was not a forceful one, but gradual and peaceful. Today, while Islam remains the religion of the majority of the 26 million people who live in Malaysia, there are large minorities of Christians, Buddhists and other religions.
Malaysia also is home to a mixture of ethnic groups. In addition to Malays, who are the majority, the country is home to many Chinese and Indians, who work well together in a free enterprise economy, Mohamad said.
"What we now term international trade has long been the culture of the Muslims," Mohamad said. She cited several verses from the Koran which encourage free enterprise. Islam also teaches quality and trying to raise the level of living of the poor, she said.
In recent years, the country has been moving from one that primarily exported natural resources, such as rubber, to one that exports manufactured goods, Mohamad said.
The U.S. is the largest investor in Malaysia today, and the country is an important exporter to the U.S. However, some trade barriers remain, and they could be lowered to the benefit of both countries, she said.
Mohamad urged better understanding between the U.S. and Muslims. "Only when we're comfortable with one another and trust one another can we do business," she said.
TERRE HAUTE - Terre Haute's lone mosque sits quietly on South Sixth Street amid fraternities, businesses, apartments, private homes, Christian churches and a museum. Its presence adds even more variety and life to an already diverse and active part of the city.
The mosque, which has been at Sixth and Washington streets for nearly 30 years, fits nicely into its neighborhood - something that also can be said of the worshippers who gather there daily. Indeed, if the 9/11 attacks five years ago were designed to drive a wedge between American Muslims and non-Muslims, they apparently failed.
"Many members [of the mosque] were invited to churches to tell them what Islam is about," said Dr. Ayman Abuhamdieh, a Muslim and a professor of management information services at Indiana State University. "I felt I was part of this bigger community," he said.
"The best of the American people came out [after 9/11] and the best of the Muslim people came out at this time," said Aboobakar Durvesh, a Pakistani-born American and worshipper at the mosque.
Many of his neighbors and customers at his then-business asked him if he was "OK" in the tense days following 9/11. "[The 9/11 hijackers] wanted to separate the people of the Muslim world from the Christian world and they failed," he said.
Without a doubt, members of the Wabash Valley's Muslim community universally condemned the 9/11 attacks, Abuhamdieh said.
"The act was completely rejected," he said. "No one voiced any support for this kind of action."
"Islam is a religion of peace," said Steve Allen, another member of the mosque who converted to Islam eight years ago. This message was widely repeated among other local Muslims.
While several members of the Terre Haute mosque said they were embraced by non-Muslims after 9/11, this was not the case for all Muslims. One former Terre Haute mosque member, who now lives in another part of the state and asked not to be identified, said his local mosque was "fire bombed" one evening after Sept. 11. The attackers' ignorance of Islamic practice led them to bomb the building at a time when worshippers were present and could easily respond.
"They just put the fire out," he said.
While local Muslims feel happy with their neighbors and their community, many are far less pleased with U.S. foreign policy in Iraq and in the Middle East. In this way, they mirror the wider American-Muslim community, which overwhelmingly opposes the war in Iraq. A 2004 Zogby poll found only around 13 percent of American Muslims supported the Iraq war, well below the some 39 percent of the overall population who expressed support for the war. Yet even in opposing the Iraq war, American Muslims are hardly out of the mainstream. A recent CNN poll found 58 percent of all Americans surveyed now oppose the war.
"I'm 100 percent against the war," said Mansor Al-Mansor, an Iraqi-born American Muslim and long-time Terre Haute businessman. President Bush "should sit down and apologize" to the American people for what Al-Mansor called the "mistake" of launching the Iraq war over "weapons of mass destruction" that never materialized.
Much of Al-Mansor's family still lives in Iraq, and both his brother and his father recently died there. He believes their deaths may have been related to the continuing Sunni-Shi'ite Muslim violence that has raged in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Nearly 6,000 Iraqis were killed in May and June, alone, according to the United Nations.
As for why 9/11 happened, some of the local Muslims interviewed reflected that it had to do with dissatisfaction over the U.S. role in the Middle East, particularly regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"Palestine has been an issue for the last 50 years," Durvesh said. "There is a real problem in that part of the world, and we are part of that problem."
Another theme that emerges from discussions with local Muslims is a frustration with what they perceive as poor portrayals of Islam and of Muslims in the U.S. media.
"The media played a big role in this [negative image of Islam]," said local businessman Al-Mansor.
"The media is supposed to be informative. It is all disinformative," Durvesh said in agreement.
Persistent media portrayals of Muslims as religious fanatics and terrorists can have long-term dangerous effects, ISU's Abuhamdieh said. "The first step in oppressing a group is to degrade them. The long-term consequences are very dangerous, very poisonous," he said.
The 75 to 100 Muslim men who gathered for Friday prayers recently at Terre Haute's mosque were as international a gathering as one is likely to find anywhere in this city. They come from the United States, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Lebanon and many other countries. They are students, professors, doctors, businessmen and laborers. They welcome visitors who come seeking insight into their teachings. Outside the mosque at the end of the prayer service, they chatted in small groups or hurried back to their jobs or professions.
This hardly seems to be a breeding ground for al-Qaida, and apparently U.S. terrorism experts and other observers are noticing that the United States, in general, seems to be infertile soil for Islamic radicalism. One senior Bush administration official quoted in a recent issue of the New Republic puts it this way: "It's the American dream. American Muslims are living that dream."
Muslims living in Europe have a far different existence. Many face what some observers call "ghettoization" in segregated urban centers fraught with high unemployment and strongly secular societies that seem hostile to openly expressed religion (France has made the wearing of Muslim headscarves in public schools illegal, for instance). In contrast, the United States is "positively and unabashedly religious," according to a New York-based imam quoted in the New Republic's December issue.
Economic conditions for most American Muslims are also far superior to that of many of their co-religionists across the Atlantic. While British Pakistanis experience unemployment three times the rate of non-Muslim Britons, and France has up to 40 percent unemployment in some Muslim "ghettos," the average American Muslim household income in 2000 was estimated at $52,000 - virtually the same as that for the average white household.
It seems clear that, five years after 9/11, Terre Haute's Islamic community is healthy and an important part of the larger community. And again, in this way it reflects the larger U.S. Muslim population. According to the 2004 Zogby poll, 51 percent of Muslim Americans believe this is a good time to be Islamic in the United States. And most Muslims surveyed also showed a strong willingness to become a part of the American mainstream, nearly all saying Muslims should donate to non-Muslim charities and nine out of 10 saying Muslims should participate in interfaith activities.
Ironically then, as seems apparent from a visit to Terre Haute's mosque, the nation Osama bin Laden sees as one of Islam's greatest foes may in fact - because of its combination of economic opportunity, cultural diversity and strong religious tradition - be a welcoming home to Muslims, both American and foreign-born.
"[My relatives in Iraq] want to come here," Al-Mansor said smiling. "They would really like to come here. This is my country, I love," he said.
Arthur Foulkes can be reached at (812) 231-4232 or arthur.foulkes@tribstar.com
Outside, the night is stretched across June in a perfect warm, black layer, clear and starry. Inside, food is spread along a wide table like an international bazaar: stuffed grape leaves, samosas, five-layer dip, Salad Olivia, meatballs, New York cheesecake - all manner of desserts "out of mom's imagination." That's the way Emily Nejad explains the elaborate expanse of food. She describes her mother, Penny, as "Martha Stewart extraordinaire, with a funky twist."
Twenty-six years ago, Penny, a rural Pennsylvania native with eight siblings, married a Middle Eastern classmate (an Iranian with seven siblings) and set about merging two cultures.
After reading book after book on culture clash, I discover here in the Nejad household only culture collaboration and celebration.
"When I graduated from college with a degree in art education, I wasn't sure what I would do with it," Penny says. "Now I find I use it in everything that takes an artistic eye"... such as the addition she designed for her East Side Evansville home and the extensive garden she created with waterfalls, day lilies, primroses - "flowers and vegetables for every season," she says.
When she married her husband, Bahram, just out of college, she realized that he and "his culture" appreciated the gifts she felt she had. "Iranian culture is all about food and family, and I felt respected and praised for my love of cooking, my ability to be the 'glue' in my household."
Some stereotypes of Middle Eastern culture she found both positive and real - for example, the concept of family connection and responsibility. Other areas proved more troublesome.
"Iranians - and Muslims in general - pride themselves on their self-discipline. They don't respect the American penchant for always entertaining themselves. My kids were continually harangued for not being serious enough students, and I was always playing mediator.
"On the other hand Asians have a point that teenagers wouldn't have to go to such self-destructive lengths to amuse themselves if society expected them to be more focused on their studies," Penny says.
"They don't understand that young people might come into the house and not acknowledge the father or other elders," she adds.
Middle Eastern men carry a strong responsibility to care for their families, children and siblings. Although a thoroughly modern American woman herself, Penny says she's never felt subdued in any way by her husband's strong sense of self.
"He supported my choice to stay home when the kids were young and is equally supportive of my current efforts to get a second college degree, this time in history." She hopes to teach, to give students "a glimpse into different cultures, a wider world view."
Tonight this mix of cultures is commemorating a son's graduation, and the spectrum of friends is as beautifully arrayed as the buffet: Turkish colleagues, Indian acquaintances, Iranian relatives, American Muslims, Jews and Christians. The merriment is gentle and genuine, and Penny moves skillfully among guests, replenishing the dolmehs, pouring wine, conversing, entertaining.
"I'm proud of my mother," Emily says. "She's learned Farsi, traveled with my father to Iran, embraced his family, hosted his siblings, supported her children, continued her education, always been ready to discuss politics with my friends. She's brave and resourceful."
She represents a mix, Emily continues, of the Eastern emphasis on the collective and the Western emphasis on the individual.
"It's just that I've discovered," Penny says, "that the most selfish and self-centered people feel the most oppressed. It really is more blessed to give than to receive. There is a balance."
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - Indiana University officials are trying to find who scrawled the word "terrorist" outside the dorm room of a 27-year-old student of Middle Eastern descent.
The unidentified student found the graffiti on a wall in Eigenmann Hall early Saturday morning.
"He was very upset," said IU police spokesman Lt. Jerry Minger. "He did not believe anyone would do that to him."
School spokesman Larry McIntyre said Wednesday he did not know the student's ethnicity or religion.
"We have a large number of foreign students on this campus every year and many of them come from Central Asia or Eastern Asia," he said.
Undergraduate and graduate IU students living on campus during the summer stay in the building.
Pam Freeman, the university's associate dean of students, said IU saw an increase in reported anti-Muslim and anti-Middle Eastern incidents after the Sept. 11 attacks. Since then, the reports have largely subsided, she said.
Of 22 reports of religious bias during the 2004-05 school year, 17 were anti-Jewish and three were anti-Muslim, according to a school report.
When Caribou Coffee went public last year, sharp-eyed investors noticed some unusual promises in its prospectus. Caribou, the nation's second-largest coffeehouse chain, said it would never sell pork or porn. It wouldn't charge or receive interest, either.
By following financial rules that are part of the Islamic code called Shariah, Caribou is among a small but growing list of Western businesses looking to make themselves as attractive as possible to Muslim investors. Some, like Caribou, are motivated by principle, while others see Muslim investors as an attractive new source of money.
Middle Eastern investors flush with oil profits are looking for new places to invest, and American Muslims are looking to invest in a way that doesn't conflict with their faith.
"There's a bunch of Islamic investors who are prohibited from a lot of regular investments, so a lot of money is sitting in cash not earning anything at all," said Khalid Howladar, a vice president for Middle Eastern and Islamic Structured Finance with Moody's Investors Service in London.
Companies and governments who need to raise money are saying, "'There's a bunch of people out there with money they can't spend _ how about I create something for them?'" he added.
Dow Jones has created an Islamic investing index. A Texas company issued almost $166 million in Shariah-compliant bonds to finance natural gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico. And the German state of Saxony-Anhalt issued a floating-rate 100-million euro note _ managed by Citigroup _ that followed Shariah rules.
Assets invested at two Shariah-compliant funds run by Saturna Capital in Bellingham, Wash. have swelled nearly 10-fold, since 2002 from $34 million in 2002 to $331 million now _ though that's still tiny by mutual fund standards. The funds invest only in companies that are Shariah-compliant.
Islamic financial rules come from passages in the Quran that prohibit "riba" _ making money from money. Generally, that means not paying or collecting interest, though some scholars say only abusively high interest rates are prohibited. Other prohibitions are more moral than financial, such as a ban on selling pork.
While many Muslims have invested conventionally in the West for years, some did so because they had few alternatives.
Moazzam Ahmed, a software engineer from Carrollton, Texas, has no car loans. Credit-card charges go on a zero-percent card or get paid off at the end of every month. And he's got a home mortgage that is a lease-buyback arrangement, rather than an interest-bearing loan, a frequent arrangement among Muslims looking to buy homes while obeying Shariah.
But he fretted about his conventional retirement investments until four years ago, when he discovered the Saturna funds.
"As soon as I found out about it I switched everything to it," he said. "I would have loved to do it from Day One, but it wasn't available, or at least I didn't know about it," he said. He said his returns have been as good as, or better than, more conventional investments he could have made.
Estimates of the number of Muslims in the United States vary from two million to six million.
Eric Meyer, who runs a Connecticut-based hedge fund called Shariah Capital, says Western banks and financial institutions need to have Shariah-compliant products or risk losing market share.
"There is a younger generation of Muslims who grew up during the last 20 to 30 years that have a reawakened sense of nationalism and religious pride that motivates them to invest according to their faith," he said.
But in Western finance, it takes some creativity to avoid earning or paying interest.
To borrow money, Shariah-compliant companies often pledge the lender a share of the profits from an asset instead of interest. Investors who need to earn a shorter-term return can contract to buy, say, $100 of copper today, and simultaneously pledge to sell copper in 90 days for, say, $103.
Caribou Coffee Company Inc., for instance, has a revolving line of credit. But instead of paying interest, it sells assets and then pays to lease them back.
"It's fair to say we do things a little differently," said Charles Ogburn, Global Head of Corporate Investment at the firm that controls a majority of Caribou stock, Bahrain-based Arcapita Bank B.S.C.
Ogburn said when he joined Arcapita five years ago, there were perhaps two or three U.S. banks who had done those kinds of loans. Now it's more like 25 or 30.
Many companies follow Shariah without even trying.
To build its index, Dow Jones in 1999 hired six Shariah scholars to set standards to screen companies. Out of 5,000, Dow Jones found 1,800 that met its standards, including drugmakers Merck & Co. and Pfizer Inc., BP PLC, Microsoft Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., and IBM Corp.
"I don't think that many of them know about Shariah-compliant investing, frankly speaking," said Rushdi Siddiqui, Dow Jones' director of Islamic market indexes.
Dow Jones now has over 60 Islamic indexes that track Shariah-compliant stocks and bonds. Siddiqui said about 30 firms have licensed the indexes, and about $5.5 billion in investments are managed in line with the indexes.
The indexes are not as strict as some might prefer. The Dow Jones indexes include companies with debt that's as much as one-third of their market capitalization, and allows companies that generate some interest.
In fact, the wide range of what counts as Shariah-compliant can be frustrating for businesses that want to raise money that way. Investment firms retain councils of Islamic scholars who determine whether a transaction complies with their interpretation of the rules, adding an extra layer of complexity to already complicated deals.
But some investors appreciate companies willing to do so.
Shirin Elkoshairi, who works for a technology company and lives in Ashland, Va., said he is getting ready to switch his investments over to a Shariah-compliant mutual fund. He already has a Shariah-compliant mortgage.
"At the end of the day, you know you're living in a house and you can actually put your head down at night and not feel bad for going against Islamic shariah," he said.
On the Net:
Arcapita Bank B.S.C.: http://www.arcapita.com
Liquidity Management Centre: http://www.lmcbahrain.com
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A company that sells Bible-quoting Jesus dolls said it was surprised and disappointed that the Marine Reserves' Toys for Tots program turned down its offer to donate 4,000 of the talking dolls.
"I believe as a churchgoing person, anyone can benefit from hearing the words of the Bible," said Michael La Roe, director of business development for Valencia-based Beverly Hills Teddy Bear Co. and its one2believe division, which makes the line of Bible character dolls.
Bill Grein, vice president of Marine Toys for Tots Foundation in Quantico, Va., said the offer was turned down because Toys for Tots doesn't know anything about the religious affiliations of the children who receive its gifts.
"We can't take a chance on sending a talking Jesus doll to a Jewish family or a Muslim family," Grein said Tuesday. "Kids want a gift for the holiday season that is fun."
According to one2believe's Web site, the button-activated, bearded Jesus doll recites Scripture such as "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again" and "Love your neighbor as yourself."Toys for Tots distributed 18 million stuffed animals, games, toy trucks and other gifts to children based on financial need in 2005.
MUSLIM ALLIANCE OF INDIANA is dedicated to empower Muslims through social engagement and developing awareness of public issues among Muslims and connecting 280,000 Muslim Hoosiers with the leadership.
To learn more about past activities and accomplishments, please visit at www.muslimalliancein.com
To be involved with MAI mission, please contact muslimalliancein@yahoo.com
To strengthen and disseminate the vision, please forward this message to others in Indiana or send email list to muslimalliancein@yahoo.com
This is intended for Muslim Hoosiers and friends promoting peace and harmony, mutual respect and making Indiana strong. If you want to be off this list, please advise.
Thank you.
