Modern banking with traditional values: an ancient faith has spawned sophisticated banking

Although Islamic banking was hardly practiced at all one generation ago, the industry is today one with assets of over $20 billion. Islamic banking is an international movement, with much geographic diversity. Islamic banks utilize profit and loss sharing rather than dealing with interest. Interest is banned in al-Qur'an. Islamic banks perform services of a commercial bank, but their money is drawn from shareholders and they can own a piece of the firms they invest in. In these two respects, they are like merchant banks. Bankers, when considering loans, must look at a firm's profitability rather than merely at its credit-worthiness. With the inflow of oil wealth to the Gulf region, devoted Muslims sought to use their wealth in an Islamic manner. Among the techniques that Islamic banks have developed are mutual funds and long term leases. While Islamic banks may have a large pool of funds, they are not popularly understood outside of Muslim countries. Citibank has cooperated