Page 156 - IANUS n. 26 - Fideiussioni omnibus e intesa antitrust: interferenze e rimedi
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VALENTINO CATTELAN





               2. Islamic finance, Muslim anthropology, and legitimate profit: al-kharaj bi-l-daman

                  Islamic  finance  has  recently  experienced  increasing  visibility  as  an  ethical
               alternative to conventional business,  as well as exceptional growth in GCC and
                                                 18
               South- Asian countries (above all, Malaysia), with an average growth rate between
               10 and 20 per cent in the last decade.  At any rate, while forming a promising niche
                                                19
               in the Middle East and Asia, at present its market share is only around two to three
               per cent of total transactions at a global level; moreover, as far as Europe and the
               West are concerned, the United Kingdom, as the largest national market (after
               Turkey),  still  attracts  only  a  marginal  percentage  of  Shari‘ah-compliant  assets,
               despite the favourable regulation fostered by the local government.
                                                                            20
                  From a historical standpoint, modern Islamic finance finds no precedent in the
               Muslim  society  of  the  past,  which  did  not  experience  institutionalised  credit
               institutions  such  as  the  European  banks  of  the  Middle  Ages.  As  shown  by
                         21
               Udovitch,  financial support in classical Islam was mainly supplied by informal
               capital providers or by credit- labour partnerships for commercial activities. In
               contrast,  the  birth  of  contemporary  Islamic  finance  relates  to  a  flourishing
                                                                              22
               academic literature on Islamic economics, from the ‘70s onwards,  and to the
               first experiments of Islamic banking in Egypt, under the liberalization programme
                                                                 23
               by  President  Sadat,  the  Infitah (‘open-door’)  policy.   While  these  preliminary
               examples of Islamic finance were primarily driven by purposes of social cohesion
               through enlarging the access to credit for the poor, it was during the ‘80s that a
               more  advanced  industry  developed  under  the  criteria  of  Shari‘ah-compliance,


                  18  TRIPP, Islam and the moral economy. The challenge of capitalism, Cambridge, 2006.
                  19  As noted in  THE BANKER (2013), Top Islamic financial institutions, Special Report, London,
               2013.
                  20  For one of the first overviews on the matter, see ERCANBRACK, Regulating Islamic finance in the
               United Kingdom, in CATTELAN (ed.), Islamic finance in Europe: towards a plural financial system, Studies
               in Islamic Finance, Accounting and Governance, Cheltenham, UK - Northampton, MA, USA,
               2013, 157-178. In this light, the original enthusiasm shown by Western scholarship towards Islamic
               finance  as  a  «key  dimension  of  the  relationship  between  Arab  banks  and  their  European
               counterparties»  (WILSON,  Islamic  finance  in  Europe,  in  RSCAS  Policy  Papers,  Musmine  –  Muslim
               Minorities in Europe, European University Institute, Florence, 2007, 8) remains still today quite
               premature.
                  21  UDOVITCH, Partnership and profit in medieval Islam, Princeton, 1970.
                  22   See,  for  instance,  CHAPRA, Islamic welfare State and its role in the economy, Leicester,  1979;
               SIDDIQI, Banking without interest, Leicester,  1976;  SIDDIQI, Issues in Islamic banking: selected papers,
               Leicester, 1983.
                  23   In  order  to  uphold  social  mobility  by  facilitating  the  access  of  the  poor  to  credit,  the
               government licensed Nasser  Social Bank (1971) and Faysal Islamic Bank (1977), that had their
               precursor in the Mit Ghamr Savings Bank (licensed by Nasser in 1963 and closed in 1968), deemed
               to be the first historical experiment of modern Islamic banking. While observing Islamic precepts in
               their operations (mainly the prohibition of interest, riba), these banks were primarily concerned with
               realising social aims by providing credit to segments of Egyptian society that, otherwise, would not
               qualify for loans (see MAYER, Islamic  banking and credit policies in the Sadat era: the  social origins of
               Islamic banking in Egypt, in Arab Law Quarterly, 1985, 49).

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