Canada-you just took one "across the bow" and you don't even know it!

Before our very eyes ... Shariah-compliant stock index comes to Toronto Stock Exchange!

From:American Islamic Forum for Democracy - Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, President

http://www.aifdemocracy.org

By Atara Beck

The Jewish Tribune, October 2009

TORONTO - Shariah law has hit the local economic community with the launch of a new Canadian stock index: the S&P/TSX (Toronto Stock Exchange) Shariah 60. This Standard & Poor's index is a variant of the TSX 60, representing the large-cap segment of the Canadian equities market. The crucial difference is the rules and strictures applicable to Muslims regarding financial and commercial activities, which therefore excludes many sectors. A supervisory board consisting of Muslim scholars was appointed to ensure that the companies in the index abide by Shariah law. One of the four, Abdul Sattar Abu Guddah, who holds a Ph.D. in Islamic law from Al Azhar University in Cairo, was accused of being closely affiliated with Sheikh Muhammad Taqi Usmani, who has been removed from numerous boards of Western banks. Abu Guddah was on the board of the al-Baraka Bank, which was implicated in the financing of 9/11 terrorism in the US. The allegations against the bank were later dismissed.

Four years ago, Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, director of the American Center for Democracy and author of Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It, warned of an international "Islamic impetus…to impose Sharia-governed banking on the West" in an article on Human Events.com. She quoted former Malaysian Prime Minister Mohamed Mahathir telling a banking conference in 2002 of the need "to absorb the 11 September shock and reinforce the stability of Islamic finance."

At that conference, representatives of nine Islamic nations gathered to set up an Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB) to "act as a global authority for Islamic banking and finance" and "to compete with secular US and international banking regulatory agencies," Ehrenfeld wrote. She also mentioned Abu Ghuddah as having been on the Sharia Board of Al Baraka Investment and Development Corporation, and "although charges against the bank were dismissed, the victims contend that the bank, together with Saudi officials and businessmen, facilitated the attacks on America."

Some media outlets and pundits around the world have commented that prominent members of Shariah finance boards are enemies of Western civilization and endorse cruelty such as wife beating as well as violent jihad. In an interview with the Jewish Tribune, Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD), declared:

"At the core, it's the establishment issue in the First Amendment [of the US Constitution] separating religion from state that they can't stand. They want clerics to not only teach religion, but also to teach law. "Muslims are fully capable of determining on their own where they want to donate and how they want to arrange their financial interactions. There is no need for a packaged product run by any clerics in order to allow Muslims to facilitate their religious charity giving, and in fact, all these Shariah financial banks do is empower clerics to impose their values upon the Muslim community with the facilitation of Standard and Poor's or whatever large Western economic interests are there. "The key [point] is it allows them to wield millions of dollars and then use that as a political instrument. They want to control the methods and the causes for which this money is used."

Jasser, a Muslim, said he grew up in a religiously observant family and was taught that there is no conflict with capitalism. "Shariah is one of the pillars of our faith," he explained. "But the bottom line is that as much as it's G-d's law, human beings are interpreting it. "Our concern with all of these funds is they are basically attempting to carve out from the global economy all Muslim money on the pretext that Western society and capitalism are in contradiction to Islam…falsely perceived as anti-Islamic."

He discussed the issues surrounding ribah - Arabic for interest - in the Koran.
"It really means usury, excessive interest," he said, accusing some Islamist financiers of "creating schemes." For example, "they might create trusts or funds and say, 'you're not paying interest, but lease-to-buy contract while living in the house,'" which often costs more. "The North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) owns more than 50 per cent of the mosques in America," he said.

"They do this moral-based evaluation and then determine where to put the money," he stated. "Make no mistake. So-called sharia compliant financing (SCF) is neither about religion nor about G-d. It is about Islamist control and collectivization of Muslims against the West and free markets. SCF systems are nothing more than a ruse to give transnational Islamist movements and their controlling Muslim theocrats an economic power base. Attempts to appease requests by Islamists to provide for socalled SCF are misguided. SCF provides sanction of a dangerously separatist economic system that incubates Islamist ideology among Muslims and keeps them apart from the general population."

Dave Guarino, spokesperson for S&P Indices, when asked to comment, told the Jewish Tribune, "The S&P/TSX 60 Shariah Index is a benchmark index, meaning that it is designed to offer investors a way to measure the performance of this segment of the Canadian market. It is not an investment vehicle. Since Standard & Poor's does not market, sell or promote any investment products based upon this index, we would have no further comment."

Carolyn Shaw-Rimmington, the Ontario Securities Commission's assistant manager, Public Affairs, said, "A Shariah investment fund is subject to the same degree of review and oversight as any publicly offered investment fund. It must comply with all applicable securities legislation, including the requirement to have a registered portfolio manager.