Umer Chapra, Saudi economist and winner of the King Faisal International Prize for Islamic Studies, is quoted in the Arab News as saying that adopting the parameters of Islamic finance would protect the financial system from crises the nature of the current one in the future. Dr. Chapra was raised in Pakistan and received his Ph. D. in the United States, at the University of Minnesota. Since 1965 he has worked in Saudi Arabia, until 1999 as an economic advisor to the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA). Navigate to his complete bio from his website.
Calls for adherence to Islamic principles in finance have been frequent in this period of global economic distress. There has also been talk of sovereign wealth funds, abundant in the Gulf, investing in failing banks, which they have been understandably hesitant to do. I would be curious to know whether any of the economists advocating Islamic finance have any influence over the funds’ decisionmaking – might such investment come with conditions that make the American banking system more halal?
