There is a solution to this crisis – in Islamic finance

Guernsey Press and Star:In the last of three articles, Toby Birch (pictured), who, under the pseudonym Hugo Bouleau, wrote The Final Crash: Addictive Debt and the Deformation of the World Economy, suggests a serious shake-up of what we do with our money.

MY FIRST article summarised the cause of the credit crisis and the second examined a historical calamity resolved with a local solution.

In this final piece, we hope to answer the trillion-dollar question – what do we do now? The current assumption is that all financial institutions must be saved, whatever the cost.

While we still need banking, we could do without its recent business models. Their role of orchestrating savers and borrowers has never been in doubt, but there remain two intertwined conflicts of interest at the core of this collapse. The first is the temptation of excess credit creation and the second is that of interest. It begs the question of how savers are to be rewarded and banks paid for their labours, which is the aim of this article.

Considering the design of a new financial system is not one of escapism but of forward thinking as economic turbulence is the usual precursor to political turmoil. Human history is blighted by extremes of Left and Right and big government versus market forces, which always end in tears.

True cohesion seems to occur only in wartime, when we cherry-pick the best people and plan to unite against an external enemy.

We need an economy that combines positive elements of capitalism and communism and a banking system that is symbiotic and not self-seeking.

Fairness, balance and altruism in finance may sound Utopian or old-fashioned, but we are in desperate need of ancient acumen. If only we could abide by the Quaker maxim, ‘my word is my bond’, transactions would then be typified by transparency, honesty and the avoidance of uncertainty.

Some might consider these thoughts to be fanciful, but this system already exists and is called Islamic finance.

Had this article been entitled ‘Islamic finance for all’, it is unlikely that many readers would have got this far. It is human nature to distrust what we don’t understand and for some Westerners a phrase that combines Islam and finance inevitably carries connotations of terrorist funding.