Islamic Banking and Finance in New Orleans

FAAIF Announces a Two Day Workshop on Islamic Banking and Finance in conjunction with AlHuda CIBE and the University of New Orleans, October 6-7, 2014 

FAAIF enters the US markets with Islamic Finance. 

FAAIF, continuing with its commitment to bring Islamic finance to the United States, announces a joint-training workshop in Islamic Banking and Finance in conjunction with the Al Huda Center of Islamic Banking and Economics and the University of New Orleans October 6 and 7, 2014 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. FAAIF CEO Camille Paldi is looking forward to this tremendous opportunity to bring Islamic finance to the people of the United States, which is her home country, and hopes that the American people are just as excited as she is about learning this distinct form of Holy Book finance. Not only does Paldi hope to enrich the lives of US citizens, she aims to help US companies stay competitive in the International financial markets and keep America strong. 

Paldi mentioned that the global Islamic financial industry is a billion dollar industry and suggests that the USA should become involved on a wider scale in order to attract funds into the United States and maintain the USA’s status as a strong force in the international economy. In addition, Paldi would like to see economic rejuvenation in depressed areas of the United States and sees Islamic finance as a tool of the people for social uplift and expansion of life opportunities. Paldi explains that Islamic finance is based on a form of interest-free Holy Book financing and profit and loss sharing where the bank acts as a finance house rather than a loan house and where the bank and borrower enter into more of a business partnership rather than a creditor/borrower relationship. Paldi elaborates that this model of finance allows the economy to grow rather than stagnate and decline from excessive debt and limits the use of destabilizing financial instruments such as derivatives. Paldi emphasizes that the life of the average American has become weighed down by a cycle of debt, which may become a lifetime trap for an American, making life more difficult than necessary. She also reveals that Islamic Finance can help the small to medium businessman/woman in times of massive corporate expansion. 

FAAIF CEO Camille Paldi is a US citizen who has lived in the United Arab Emirates for six years and has spent many years training in Islamic finance and Shariáh abroad in addition to having qualified as a lawyer in four countries. Al Huda CIBE, having conducted hundreds of successful training workshops all over the world is excited to enter the American markets to bring fascinating and complex Islamic finance and banking products and structures to citizens of the United States. Contact camille@faaif.com or info@alhudacibe.com for registration. Event Website: http://www.alhudacibe.com/usa2014/

Visitors

Lawyers, Bankers, Academics, Students, Knowedge-Seekers.

Exhibitors

Investment Banking, Finance

Book Review - The History & Future of Islamic Finance

Yet today Islamic finance is a trillion-dollar industry with many financial institutions, corporations and governments keen to embrace it as a profit-making alternative to mainstream financial dealings.

Harris Irfan is an insider on two fronts. He is a Muslim and also an expert in finance and commerce. He has worked as an investment banker in Europe and the Middle East and been head of Islamic finance at Barclays; he also founded Cordoba Capital, an Islamic finance advisory firm.

Mr Irfan is a man with a mission: to show that Islamic finance might be able to make a real contribution to our economic woes. He asks the reader to consider whether the Islamic world can "bring something of benefit to the Western world, and vice versa".

This is no mean task, but Mr Irfan uses his own professional and personal experiences to weave together an accessible and interesting story.

We get an insight into the birth of the Islamic finance system in the fifties, to the establishment of the first Muslim banks in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States and the gradual recognition by Western banks of the enormous profit potential in structuring products on a sharia-compliant basis.

Traditional clerics were flattered with the attention and remuneration offered by the giants of the banking industry in exchange for their expertise.

While this book isn't full of jargon, it helps to know something about how the investment industry works. You also need to have some sense of Islamic history and religious concepts. But the religious commentary does not overcomplicate the narrative. Anecdotes about the life of the eighth-century Muslim legal scholar Abu Hanifa, the financial workings of the Ottoman Empire and the modern controversial Pakistani scholar Taqi Usmani all add weight.

The last chapter ponders the future of Islamic banking after some sharia-compliant finances were unfairly equated with funding terrorism, Worth reading.

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