ANS -- Another (real) reason the Kochers dislike Sharia:

This really interesting article-let was in the comments to an article about Colbert taking over for what's his name....It's about why the Banksters and Greedsters are against Sharia Law. 
find it here (if you can):  http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/04/11/1291227/-Stephen-Colbert-hits-back-at-Bill-O-Reilly?detail=facebook
--Kim

* [new]  Another (real) reason the Kochers dislike Sharia: ( 7+ / 0-)

The Corporatist concepts of debt and usury as Good Business Practices, and of "money" as an ASSET that can be leveraged, are big no-nos. There's a lot of hypocrisy among Muslims, too, when it comes to High Finance and financialization and monetization, just like with drinking alcohol and eating proscribed foods and various other kinds of proscribed profligacy.

But if the Sharia framing of economic relations, particularly what we call "banking" relations, were to catch on, where would Lloyd Blankfein and Timmy Geithner and that Chicago toad Friedman be? Here's a bit of text from one of many primers on Sharia finance:

The Big Picture

Although they have been mandated since the beginnings of Islam in the seventh century, Islamic banking and finance have been formalized gradually since the late 1960s, coincident with and in response to tremendous oil wealth which, fueled renewed interest in and demand for Sharia-compliant products and practice.

Central to Islamic banking and finance is an understanding of the importance of risk sharing as part of raising capital and the avoidance of riba (usury) and gharar (risk or uncertainty). (To see more on risk, read Determining Risk And The Risk Pyramid and Personalizing Risk Tolerance.) [Compare Sharia notions with what rules here, the privatization of gain and "socialization" of loss, risk and externalities... not a pretty sight.]

Islamic law views lending with interest payments as a relationship that favors the lender, who charges interest at the expense of the borrower. Because Islamic law views money as a measuring tool for value and not an 'asset' in itself, it requires that one should not be able to receive income from money (for example, interest or anything that has the genus of money) alone. Deemed riba (literally an increase or growth), such practice is proscribed under Islamic law (haram, which means prohibited) as it is considered usurious and exploitative. By contrast, Islamic banking exists to further the socio-economic goals of Islam.

Accordingly, Sharia-compliant finance (halal, which means permitted) consists of profit banking in which the financial institution shares in the profit and loss of the enterprise that it underwrites. Of equal importance is the concept of gharar. Defined as risk or uncertainty, in a financial context it refers to the sale of items whose existence is not certain. Examples of gharar would be forms of insurance, such as the purchase of premiums to insure against something that may or may not occur or derivatives used to hedge against possible outcomes. (To read more about insurance or hedges, see A Beginner's Guide To Hedging, Understand Your Insurance Contract and Exploring Advanced Insurance Contract Fundamentals.)

The equity financing of companies is permissible, as long as those companies are not engaged in restricted types of business - such as the production of alcohol, pornography or weaponry - and only certain financial ratios meet specified guidelines.

[emphasis added] http://www.investopedia.com/...

But we "JudeoChristians," who per our holy texts used to benefit from something called "Jubilee," http://www.forbes.com/... as a way to keep debt from becoming slavery, would all have our heads explode if all the idiotic genius of monetization and securitization and derivitization and financialization of EVERYthing were to be, you know, "against the law." Which law is now, you know, written by and for the very people who would be, like, "regulated" by the Delaware corporation law and the Uniform Commercial Code and the bankruptcy code (especially as relates to discharges of consumer and student and medical debt) and "securities" law and all that...

OMG! NO SHARIA LAW HERE!

"Is that all there is?" Peggy Lee.

by jm214 on Fri Apr 11, 2014 at 09:43:33 AM PDT