Posted on 01/02/2006 7:56:51 AM PST by quantim
ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) — A bank that has been offering special services for Muslims for two years has now formed a subsidiary to focus solely on the religious group.
The Ann Arbor-based University Bank has created University Islamic Financial Corp. to offer Muslims home financing, deposit accounts and Islamic mutual fund shares.
"The formation of the subsidiary allows us to have a financial institution which is 100 percent in compliance with the Muslim Shariah, the legal code of the Islamic religion," bank President and Chairman Stephen Lange Ranzini told The Ann Arbor News for a Saturday story.
Among the laws of Shariah is a ban against paying or receiving interest.
The bank's Islamic deposit accounts allow Muslims to open accounts where any profits are shared rather than paid as interest.
University Bank also offers a mortgage alternative loan transaction program — or MALT — which replaces a traditional home loan with a redeemable lease.
The bank holds the home in trust, and a home buyer makes monthly payments to that trust. Each rent payment includes a set amount of savings, which builds the buyer's equity in the home. When the savings account equals the home's original purchase price, the buyer owns it.
The mortgages are offered across the state, with 57 families in the Detroit area having such loans, and Ranzini said plans are to offer such mortgages nationwide.
Other banks also are targeting Muslims, said Tracey Mills, a spokeswoman for the American Bankers Association trade group.
"There have been other banks that have formed relationships with the Islamic community, developing lending products that aren't in violation with Islamic law," she said.
The Institute of Islamic Banking & Insurance, an independent Islamic finance academic and research group in London, shows that more than 250 Islamic banks around the world manage more than $200 billion.
Ranzini said University Islamic Financial Corp. will allow the University Bank to expand its capital base. He expects the bank, a subsidiary of the Ann Arbor-based University Bancorp financial holding company, will double its assets, which were listed at $56.5 million on Sept. 30.
He said the corporation was formed with $15.5 million raised through the sale of 40,000 shares of private stock.
The bank owns 80 percent of the corporation while the remaining 20 percent is held by Virtue Investors LLC, a group of private investors from Grand Rapids, Ranzini said.
When do the homosexuals get their own bank?
No wonder Islam is such a basket case economically. But it's our fault, and the way to eliminate terrorism is to end their poverty....
I'd've loved to have read THAT business plan.
Do you have to be a Muslim to use this bank, I wonder?
Yeah. And "shared profits"? Hypocrites. It's a shell game.
I've lived in Michigan all my life (my problem, I know), everytime I have any reason to go to Ann Arbor I am always amazed that it just keeps getting nuttier and nuttier. What a place. It's exists in its own time warp: it's always about 1969 there.
i aggree if its true, zero interest loans, wow! can i get one too?
anytime a bank offers something for free....
like the government, they give with one hand and take with the other
day to day service fees must be a killer
And the Feds are watching the money going in and out of that bank?
So many houses, so few buyers (Ann Arbor real estate bubble)
It all depends what the definition of 'interest' is.
no, the bank is still making money somehow. they can't offer a true 0% interest loan.
I thought the same thing until I reread the article. They are making lease payments and a portion is set aside to a 'savings account' to purchase the home. So the other portion of the lease money is going where? To the bank.
The bank has to find a profitable way to do this or is the money going to Islam?
And like another poster here, I wonder if the feds are monitering the money going in and out of this bank. Wouls FISA grant a warrant? I would bet not. vaudine
Ann Arbor.
Shell game to be sure. I found this at marketwire.
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=104992
Playing in the US stock market sound awfully um - Judeo-Christian in nature ;)
(I can just see the sandal-scandal when this pyramid crumbles)
At least it wasn't a sperm bank!
No problem if,
Any American (any religious belief or ethnicity) can do business with this bank (according to this bank's rules). You can always take your business to another bank if it does not agree with you.
Capitalism adjusting to the demands of its customers.
And the FEDS keep an eye on where the "profits are used".
So, Whereas I pay a fee for the use of the bank's money in the form of interest which means I pay out of pocket apporximately twice the purchase price of the home, they merely pay the purchase price over time? Or am I missing something?
As far as banking the zero interest aspect is just a joke. The interest that would be applied is just added to the cost of the thing being purchased and then split up in payments. The home mortgage is basically nothing more of the same and a contract for deed.
By the way, all anyone needs to see to find out how islam really works is to go here. And no, it's not a joke site. Well, it is and it isn't.
ISLAM - Come on in! Just dont forget to check your brain at the mosque door. /sarcasm off
Looking at a map, above and central to the U.S., is Michigan.
Now imagine (or remember) the old "third degree" scenes of Cagny or Robinson.
See it?
The harsh, bright light is on, blinding and confusing the interogee (word?), and multiple voices yammering ... "C'mon Spike, we know you did it."
America had better wake up.
The interrogation usually wins and another 1930's cop flick hits the screen.
Our screens are before us, the medium is electrons and the patrons are you and me.
I know I get extremely pissed off when I read this $h!t .......
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