“Really? I love Muslims! I do a Bacon Explosion to die for.”
Posted on 03/07/2009 8:35:17 PM PST by Libloather
A Hometown Bank Heeds a Call to Serve Its Islamic Clients
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
Published: March 6, 2009
ANN ARBOR, MICH.
Until a stranger without an appointment showed up one day in late 2001, Stephen L. Ranzini was feeling rather pleased with himself. University Bank here, which he led as president, had just won a national award for community service. The honor attested to Mr. Ranzini’s success in working with local black ministers and a nonprofit agency to increase home-ownership in African-American neighborhoods.
Then, disturbing the aura of satisfaction, a well-dressed man arrived and insisted on seeing the president. “If your bank is so outstanding for community service,” the visitor said, as Mr. Ranzini recently recalled, “how come you’re not servicing my community?”
What community, the banker asked, would that be?
“I’m a Muslim,” the man responded.
Mr. Ranzini started to explain that University Bank already had plenty of Muslim customers, hardly a surprise in a college town in the area of southeast Michigan with the largest concentration of Arab-Americans in the United States.
That answer did not satisfy the visitor. Those Muslims, he said, were paying or earning interest.
“So what?” Mr. Ranzini said. Wasn’t interest sort of the whole point of what banks did?
Over the next 10 minutes, Mr. Ranzini, a Roman Catholic executive who had grown up in the vanilla suburbs of New Jersey, started an education that would ultimately transform an otherwise conventional hometown bank into a national leader in the growing specialty of Islamic finance. This year, the bank won an award from the American Bankers Association largely for its service to Muslim clients.
University Bank now has an entire subsidiary devoted to financial products that comply with Muslim religious law, or Shariah.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Christian banks are on the way - soon...
“I’m a Muslim,” the man responded.
"Oh, well that's nice. I'm an American, and my community is of Americans. Tell me sir, are you an American first or a Muslim first?"
"Why, a Muslim first of course."
"Wrong community. Good day."
He should have CONTINUED to say, “So what?”, but then he might have realized that they know where he lives, where his kids go to school, his wife’s daily routine,etc., and decided he’s been punked....or maybe it’s just about the money, after all/s
Besides the NYT trying to disingenuously promote Shariah through association with non-usary activities, in fact usary, per the article, is not being avoided at all. Instead, the bank merely creates a fiction whereby the entire cost of a house, plus 30 years of interest rates, is added up and then divided across the time payments of the loan. So where is the denial of usary here? Why not just call all of the interest each month chocolate drops, and make the loan agreement include chocolate drop payments? The whole article is a fraud, designed to shove Shariah in everyone’s faces as some sort of reasonable but profound power that even banks must obey. You should read the article, though - the NYT makes more favorable quotes towards faith in God than they have in the entirety of their last fifty years of articles about Christianity. What brazen hypocrites they are.
“In one variation, the bank actually buys the house at a qualified customer’s direction, and then sells it to that customer through monthly installments modeled on the payments of a 30-year mortgage.”
Hmmmmm... Does this mean that if a restaurant puts out a Muslim menu labeling pork as beef that it is ok for the Muslim to eat it?
“Really? I love Muslims! I do a Bacon Explosion to die for.”
I don’t give a crap what banks do as long as it doesn’t affect me.
Sharia = no interest payments.
The Muslim US president is eliminating interest deductions from income tax to conform the tax code to Sharia law.
Really.
They lob off your head for missing a payment - and you wouldn't mind?
Well if they’re lobbing off *my* head then it would affect me and I would mind. But I don’t care if some banks decides to tap an untapped market by selling these BS “non-interest” sharia loans. Now, if the government ordered banks to do so, then I’d complain. But as I see it, this is just a privately owned bank trying to conduct business according to their own needs and desires. Why should I care?
Plus, it is producing another bubble of housing "worth" which doesn't begin to reflect the real worth.
This is just another smoke-and-mirrors trick that changes the meaning of words, but not reality, sort of like "religion of peace."
They can also sell a property without interest and instead charge a “service fee” or some such rot. It’s all smoke and mirrors. And Allah knows best.
With a nice chianti, no doubt.
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