Popularity and Availability
Today many financial institutions, even in the Western world, that offer financial services and products in accordance with Islamic finance. For example, Chancellor Gordon Brown in 2003 introduced legal changes that enabled British banks and building societies to offer so-called Muslim mortgages for house purchase.
In 2004 the UK's first standalone Sharia–compliant bank was launched, the Islamic Bank of Britain. Several banks offer products and services to UK customers that adopt the Islamic financial principles; such as Mudaraba, Murabaha, Musharaka and Qard.
The Islamic finance sector was worth 300–500 billion dollars (237 and 394 billion euros) as of September 2006, compared with 200 billion dollars in 2004. Islamic retail banks and investment funds number in the hundreds and many Western financial institutions offer compliant products, including Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Lloyds TSB and UBS. In 2008, at least $500 billion in assets around the world were managed in accordance with Islamic law and the sector was growing at more than 10% per year.
Read more about this topic: Islamic Economic Jurisprudence
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