In this episode we dive not just into the world of Islamic Finance and Fintech but the practical lessons we can learn from the world’s oldest “ethical investment” tradition. In particular in an ever-changing world there is always the need to extend and interpret any given set of “ethical finance” guidelines for new circumstances. The Islamic world has had vastly longer to get to grips with managing this confluence of principle and practice in a Heraclitean world of constant change.

In LFP223 we heard about Fintech in the Middle East and North Africa in which regions there are varying mixtures of traditional/Islamic/sharia finance and conventional/modern finance. Umer Suleman has worked in the public sector, at Ernst and Young, HSBC and now at Wahed – an ethical and values driven investment platform based in New York – – an ethical and values driven investment platform based in New York who are perhaps the world’s largest Islamic Fintech – and so is well-placed to appreciate both conventional and Islamic Finance and their complex relationships and how they have changed over time. He is also a member of the Islamic Finance Council of the UK and so well-immersed in this topic.

In this episode we get to understand the challenge and opportunity of serving a specific demographic. Needless to say especially younger demographics around the world in general are becoming ever-more demanding in terms of products and services in the tech age and this too certainly applies to the more religious of the younger Muslim users of FS who may no longer be prepared to accept the inevitable compromises with a world where the Financial System operates almost entirely based on interest that previous generations may have tolerated/had to tolerate.

So plenty of education, rich content and lessons to be learned beyond one particular demographic!

• a World Bank report from 2015 estimated that global Sharia-compliant Finance assets were around $2trn
  
• Imam Al Ghazali – an 11thC polymath – theologian, philosopher, economist and much more
  
• the highly-recommended film by Salazar about Al Ghazali’s life The Alchemist of Happiness 
  
• by contrast the modern “anti-polymath”-isation of knowing more and more about less and less
  
• Al Ghazali was an influence on Adam Smith
  
• Umer’s career journey and eventually being able to incorporate his interest in Islamic Finance with his career in finance
  
• ethical investment systems of any type need both a basis and a pragmatic way of applying rules made at some point with a different world at a later point; what are the key sources for Islamic Finance?
  
• an overview of Islamic Finance principles of investment and banking
  
• detailed primary and secondary rules and how they are applied
  
• the 5% pragmatic “fall from perfection” realpolitik of permissibility but what needs to be done in those circs
  
• what percentages of Finance and Sharia-compliant in the major regions – challenges over lack of data and interesting reasons therefor