The politics of Islamic finance /

In the post-9/11 environment it has become fashionable and profitable to be anti "anything Islamic," and the practice of legitimate Islamic finance and banking has become treacherous. The penchant of Islamists to work with Islamic financial institutions for religious reasons makes these institutions dependent on Islamists for their business survival. This, in turn, might necessitate that these financial institutions undertake favorable actions to benefit anti-incumbent movements in the "Islamic" countries despite these countries' general social and political intolerance relative to business. Therefore, financial institutions can have both an emboldening effect on political movements and a potential for moderating their militancy given that they control the purse strings. These potentials and actual web of relationships among the financiers, politicians, and political antagonists have also made Islamic banking and financial institutions suspect as a conduit, and possibly as a facilitator, of "terrorism and subversive" activities. This book deals with the interrelationships among financial institutions, politicians, and political movements and explores the political implications of the steady accumulation of Islamic capital. Case studies include the Sudan, Kuwait, Jordan, Turkey, Tunisia, and Egypt. Valuable reading for anyone who wants to understand Islamic banking and its formal and informal societal and political relationships. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate through professional collections. H. Zangeneh Widener University