Thread: White House welcomes Shariah finance specialist

White House welcomes Shariah finance specialist

Obama selects Muslim expert in Islamic transactions as fellow --WND

Posted: June 25, 2010
12:00 am Eastern
By Chelsea Schilling
© 2010 WorldNetDaily


Samar Ali (Photo: Vanderbilt Register)

The Obama administration has announced its appointment of 13 White House fellows – and the first person featured on its short list is a Muslim attorney who specializes in Shariah-compliant transactions.

"This year's White House fellows are comprised of some of the best and brightest leaders in our country," Michelle Obama said in the June 22 announcement. "I applaud their unyielding commitment to public service and dedication to serving their community."

White House fellows spend a year as full-time, paid assistants to senior White House staff, the vice president, Cabinet secretaries and senior administration officials.

Samar Ali of Waverly, Tenn., is the first name appearing on the White House list. http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/fellows/2010-2011-class She is an associate with the law firm Hogan Lovells – a firm that claims to have advised on more than 200 Islamic finance transactions with an aggregate deal value in excess of $40 billion. http://www.hoganlovells.com/islamic-finance/

According to Ali's biography posted on the White House website, "She is responsible for counseling clients on mergers & acquisitions, cross-border transactions, Shari'a compliant transactions, project finance, and international business matters. During her time with Hogan Lovells, she has been a founding member of the firm's Abu Dhabi office."

Hogan Lovells lists Ali's experience "advising a Middle Eastern university in the potential establishment of a Foreign Aid Conventional and Shari'ah Compliant Student Loan Program and advising a Middle Eastern client in relation to a U.S. government subcontract matter." http://www.hoganlovells.com/samar-ali/

"Our team members are at the forefront of developments in the Islamic finance industry," Hogan Lovells boasts. "We help set standards for the sector. We have also advised on numerous first-of-their-kind transactions, such as the first convertible Sukuk, the first equity-linked Sukuk, the first Sharia-compliant securitization, the first international Sukuk al-mudaraba and Sukuk al-musharaka, the first Sukuk buy-back, and the first Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) guaranteed Islamic project financing."

Ali also clerked for Judge Gilbert S. Merritt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and Judge Edwin Cameron, now of the Constitutional Court of South Africa.

Promoting Islam and Shariah

The White House notes that Ali also led the YMCA Israeli-Palestinian Modern Voices for Progress Program and is a founding member of the first U.S. Delegation to the World Islamic Economic Forum. Ali was listed as a member of the British delegation http://www.mcb.org.uk/downloads/5th%20W ... ochure.pdf to the World Islamic Economic Forum in 2009 and as a U.S. delegate in 2010. http://www.mcb.org.uk/wief/Documents/6WIEF_Brochure.pdf

Shariah Finance Watch blog noted, "[I]t was at the World Islamic Economic Forum where key leaders declared Shariah finance to be "dawa" (missionary) activity to promote Islam and Shariah."

In fact, the president of Indonesia, H. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, delivered a March 2, 2009, keynote address to Islamic leaders at the World Islamic Economic Forum in Jakarta during which he called for Islamic banks to do "missionary work in the Western world." http://www.wief.org.my/pdf/OPENING%20SP ... hoyono.pdf

"Islamic banking should now be able to take a leadership position in the banking world," he said. "Islamic banks have been much less affected by the financial meltdown than the conventional banks – for the obvious reason that Shariah banks do not indulge in investing in toxic assets and in leveraged funds. They are geared to supporting the real economy."

He added, "Islamic bankers should therefore do some missionary work in the Western world to promote the concept of Shariah banking, for which many in the West are more than ready now."

'We didn't consider terrorists to be Muslims'

Ali received her law degree from Vanderbilt Law School and served as the first Arab-Muslim student body president at Vanderbilt. She has interned for the Islamic International Arab Bank in Amman, Jordan.

According to Vanderbilt Law School, Ali's mother immigrated to the U.S. from Syria, and her father is Palestinian. He left the West Bank town of Ramallah at age 17. http://law.vanderbilt.edu/article-searc ... px?nid=328

America.gov reported that Ali said her parents taught her to "never forget where we came from and to never forget where we are now." http://www.america.gov/st/washfile-engl ... 70392.html

"I will always be Arab and I will always be American and I will always be Muslim," she said.

Ali spoke out at a campus memorial service days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"In my opinion," she told the Washington File, "Al-Qaida is trying to ruin Islam's reputation and we are simply not going to let them win this fight. If someone has a political agenda, they need to call it what it is, and not disguise it in the name of a religion or use the religion to achieve their political goals. This is simply unacceptable."

While she said she grieved the loss of thousands of American lives, Ali told the File she grew concerned about whether Americans would assume that she, as a Muslim and Arab-American, approved of those attacks.

"Thus, I was worried that many of my fellow citizens, would not realize that just because my friends and I are Muslims and Arabs, did not mean that we were part of or even agreed with the terrorists who caused September 11," she said. "We didn't even consider the terrorists to be Muslims. I was worried that people would confuse Islam with Osama Bin Ladin and his agenda, that they would confuse his agenda as the agenda of all believers in Islam."

Creeping Shariah

Shariah already is moving into some elements of American society, with a lawsuit pending over U.S. government involvement in a financial institution that accommodates Shariah requirements in its business operations. http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=164353

WND also reported in November 2008 that the Treasury Department sponsored and promoted a conference titled "Islamic Finance 101." http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=80003

Islamic finance is a system of banking consistent with the principles of Shariah, or Islamic law. It is becoming increasingly popular, having reached $800 billion by mid-2007 and growing at more than 15 percent each year. Wall Street now features an Islamic mutual fund and an Islamic index. However, critics claim anti-American terrorists are often financially supported through U.S. investments – creating a system by which the nation funds its own enemy.

In his July 2008 essay, "Financial Jihad: What Americans Need to Know," Vice President Christopher Holton of the Center for Security Policy wrote, "America is losing the financial war on terror because Wall Street is embracing a subversive enemy ideology on one hand and providing corporate life support to state sponsors of terrorism on the other hand."

Holton referred to Islamic finance, or "Shariah-Compliant Finance" as a "modern-day Trojan horse" infiltrating the U.S. He said it poses a threat to the U.S. because it seeks to legitimize Shariah – a man-made medieval doctrine that regulates every aspect of life for Muslims – and could ultimately change American life and laws.

Some advocates claim Islamic finance is socially responsible because it bans investors from funding companies that sell or promote products such as alcohol, tobacco, pornography, gambling and even pork.

However, many Islamic financial institutions also require industry participants to adhere to tenets of Shariah law. According to Nasser Suleiman's "Corporate Governance in Islamic Banking, "First and foremost, an Islamic organization must serve God. It must develop a distinctive corporate culture, the main purpose of which is to create a collective morality and spirituality which, when combined with the production of goods and services, sustains growth and the advancement of the Islamic way of life."

Three nations that rule 100 percent by Shariah law – Iran, Saudi Arabia and Sudan – hold some of the most horrific human rights records in the world, Holton said.

"This strongly suggests that Americans should strenuously resist anything associated with Shariah."

Tenets of Shariah

In his essay, "Islamic Finance or Financing Islamism," Alex Alexiev outlined the following tenets of Shariah taken from "The Reliance of the Traveler: The Classic Manual of Sacred Law":

A woman is eligible for only half of the inheritance of a man
A virgin may be married against her will by her father or grandfather
A woman may not leave the house without her husband's permission
A Muslim man may marry four women, including Christians and Jews; a Muslim woman can only marry a Muslim
Beating an insubordinate wife is permissible
Female sexual mutilation is obligatory
Adultery [or the perception of adultery] is punished by death by stoning
Offensive, military jihad against non-Muslims is a religious obligation
Apostasy from Islam is punishable by death without trial
Lying to infidels in time of jihad is permissible
'Useful idiots'

Alexiev wrote that many Islamic financial institutions claim Shariah-Compliant Finance "derives its Islamic character from the strict observance of the ostensible Quranic prohibition of lending at interest, the imperative of almsgiving (zakat), avoidance of excessive uncertainty (gharar) and certain practices and products considered unlawful (haram) to Muslims …" However, he said, "[E]ven a casual examination of the reality of Islamic finance today reveals it to be a bogus concept practiced by deceptive ploys and disingenuous means by practitioners that are or should be aware of that, but remain predictably silent."

Shariah finance institutions have funded militant Islamism for more than 30 years. Alexiev cited Islamic Development Bank's hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions to Hamas in support of suicide bombing. Bank Al-Taqwa and other banks and charities run by Saudi billionaires that have funded al-Qaida activities.

Additionally, Shariah law mandates that Muslims donate 2.5 percent of their annual incomes to charities – including jihadists. When 400 banks regularly contribute to such charities, potential financial sums can be virtually limitless.

If Western banks endorse Shariah, they will "end up becoming what Lenin called useful idiots or worse to the Islamists," Alexiev wrote. "And it is a very thin line between that and outright complicity in the Islamist agenda."

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=170617

Are we dealing with Anti Islamic bigots driven by ignorance and fear here or what. It is a rhetorical question obviously we are. There are Quakers and Mormons who have proscriptions against certain kinds of investment. Of course there are Moslems who do not want their money invested in particular ways. That does not make them bad or somehow un American..

A woman is eligible for only half of the inheritance of a man
A virgin may be married against her will by her father or grandfather
A woman may not leave the house without her husband's permission
A Muslim man may marry four women, including Christians and Jews; a Muslim woman can only marry a Muslim
Beating an insubordinate wife is permissible
Female sexual mutilation is obligatory
Adultery [or the perception of adultery] is punished by death by stoning
Offensive, military jihad against non-Muslims is a religious obligation
Apostasy from Islam is punishable by death without trial
Lying to infidels in time of jihad is permissible
'Useful idiots'

This is not Shariah it is one persons interpretation of Shariah when in fact there are as many interpretations as there are followers of Islam. There is also a body of Christian influenced secular law and just as in Islam no two people believe exactly the same thing.

There is something going on with Islam in this and the previous century that we need to not miss. For example: right now Christianity is fragmented and while a strong factor in many cultures, few people are afraid of anything that might happen to them for opposing Christianity, not practicing Christianity, or offending Chritianity. Christianity in this country is regulated as are ALL religions: they are barred from inflicting any more than ecclesiatical penalties on a member (i.e. they cannot inflict civil or criminal penalties). They cannot, for example, fine you, seize any property from you, prevent you from marrying, force you to marry, jail you, or execute you. All a religion is allowed to do is act upon your privileges of membership. Back in the middle ages, and for a few centuries afterwards, in the nations where Christianity was strong, the Church could do all these things to you (inflict civil and criminal penalties or cause them to be inflicted due to its power over and influence with the civil government) and more.

Back in the day, the distinction between civil and religious government was not clear in people's minds. What changed that in the West was the same philosophical current that gave birth to the nation of America and its Constitution.

What is alarming about Islamic nations now is that they seem to be moving in the opposite direction. Some who adopted modern societies and practices now seem to be moving towards an artificial idea of Islam that they think represents a pure, original Islam but in fact is a mental construct. Rather like how the FLDS (fundamentalist, polygamous Mormons) will claim that they represent the original Mormonism. In some things, yes, but nistorically they are a recreation of someone's idea of what it was like.

There is a group of thinkers in the Islamic world behind the movement that turned Islam from just another religion and culture into a threat to the West. One term for this is 'Islamist' and not all Muslims agree with this line of thought, but it is growing. One of them was the focus of an NPR presentation, and I urge one and all to take a look-see if you've missed it.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=1253796

Islam and Mexico are playing the same waiting game of

"behaving until they get enough numbers in where they want to take control"

Islam and Mexico are playing the same waiting game of

"behaving until they get enough numbers in where they want to take control"

Will this lead to more divisions, thus more disorganization, which will require more control?

"The Constitution of the United States, happily, was framed by exceptional men thoroughly schooled in the realities of government. It consists, accordingly, not of principles newly invented, to be put into operation by means of devices originated for the occasion, but of sound pieces of tested experience. It has served its pupose beneficently, not because it was written, but because it has proved itself accordant in every essential part with tried principles of government - principles tested by the race for whose use it was intended, and therefore already embedded in their lives and practices."

The above quote is from a book SELECTED LITERARY AND POLITICAL PAPERS AND ADDRESSES of WOODROW WILSON.

The part that caught my attention was the reference towards the Constitution, "tested by the race." Could religion have just as easily or perhaps even more so taken the place of race?