By Rushdi Siddiqui, Global Head of Islamic Finance, Thomson Reuters

Dear Dr. Ahmad Mohamed Ali, President, Islamic Development Bank (IDB) Group:

Asalaam Alaikum:

The Islamic finance world welcomes your comments on the ‘Mega’ Islamic Bank to effectively compete against well capitalized conventional financial institutions.

“…The ‘Mega Islamic Bank’ comes as an initiative of the Islamic Development Bank in its efforts to address the dearth of senior financiers, the absence of the Islamic tools of stock exchange and the absence of market liquidity between Islamic banks.”

However, $1 billion, with $500 million in paid capital by the three founders (IDB, Dallah Albaraka and Qatar Government), is smaller than three existing Islamic banks, which have never addressed themselves as ‘mega.’ The three include Saudi Arabia’s Al Rajhi, Qatar’s Mashraf Al Rayan and Kuwait’s Kuwait Finance House (KFH). Furthermore, it seems the ‘mega’ story may be incomplete without Malaysia’s participation.

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By Rushdi Siddiqui

Daud Vicary Abdullah is an authority on Islamic banking and has contributed to a number of books on the subject.

He has been in the finance and consulting industry for more than 38 years, with significant experience in Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. Meet Daud Vicary Abdullah, the president and CEO of International Centre of Education in Islamic Finance (Inceif), the global university of Islamic finance.
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By Rushdi Siddiqui, Global Head of Islamic Finance, Thomson Reuters

‘Don’t cheat the world of your contribution. Give it what you’ve got.’ - Steven Pressfield

On November 22, 2011, the world’s first Islamic interbank benchmark rate (IIBR) was launched. It is the result of a collaborative approach taken by many Islamic financial institution, industry associations, and Shariah scholars, over the course of 24 months, to a decades-old industry challenge: how to decouple Islamic finance from a conventional Western pricing benchmark (LIBOR) and the law of necessity when an ‘Islamic’ alternative was not available. The objective was to support and preserve Islamic finance authenticity.
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openDemocracy /Foter

By Alon Ben-Meir

In the wake of the Arab Spring and Prime Minister Erdogan’s championing of political reforms throughout the Arab world, it has now become more urgent than ever before to find an equitable solution to the Turkish-Kurdish conflict. Short of finding an immediate resolution to this debilitating struggle will not only severely compromise Turkey’s suggested model of successfully combining Islam and democracy, but it will additionally bankrupt its moral standing as it willfully continues to discriminate against 15 million Kurds who represent one-fifth of its population.
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Egyptians have achieved a major milestone by holding the first leg of their staggered parliamentary elections, and they can take a moment to rejoice. But they know better than anyone else that the road to fulfilling their destiny is strewn with many more hurdles. READ MORE HERE

On the eve of the elections, Egyptians have washed off much of the feel-good afterglow of the first revolution that ousted Hosni Mubarak. Now they are faced with the cold hard light of economic hardship and political uncertainty.

While Egypt’s first revolution earlier this year was full of hope and a spontaneity that surprised even the protestors, the second revolution less than 10 months later has a much sombre undertone. READ MORE HERE

It’s ironic that the man who used his formidable oil assets as a weapon to hold his people - and the world - hostage, saw little reaction from oil markets upon his death.
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