Funds scooped up by the West

As Islamic investments look for greater returns, Western banks are called in as agents to manage funds and to perform transactions. Western and conventional banks in the Muslim world are working laboriously to court Islamic investors and to absorb the funds available in the Islamic investments field. Among the tactics used to attract investors are separate Islamic units borne out of conventional banks and ever-increasingly sophisticated products and services tailored to the demands of Islamic law. Western institutions began their involvement with Islamic practices in the early 1980's. The three basic interactions between Western and Islamic banks are arrangements in which: a Western bank begins a deal and an Islamic one takes the burden of risk; a Western bank acts on behalf of an Islamic bank in commodity exchanges; a Western bank raises funds and manages them according to Islam.