Home
In this issue

Dec. 4, 2008

Michael Freund: France vs. the Jewish right to reproduce

Frida Ghitis: Heed the security lessons of deadly siege

Dec. 3, 2008

Steven Emerson: Yes, the terrorists are winning

Don Terry: Lifetime, no see

Dec. 2, 2008

Melanie Phillips: The Mumbai atrocity is a wake-up call for a frighteningly unprepared world

Stratfor Geopolitical Intelligence Report: Strategic Motivations for the Mumbai Attack

Dec. 1, 2008

Max Freidlander, as told to Jacklyn C. Wadler: India Inkings

Mark Steyn: Whodunit!?

Nov. 28, 2008

Rabbi Ahron Rapps: An evil seed that didn't have to be

Melanie Phillips: Carpe diem --- or can we all relax now?

Nov. 26, 2008

Michael Feldberg: Meet the Orthodox Jew who laid groundwork for scientific development of ordnance that undergirds America's current world leadership

Andrea Simantov: Shades of life

Nov. 25, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Getting Emotional For Influence

The Kosher Gourmet by Ethel G. Hofman : Thanksiving feast!

Nov. 24, 2008

Rabbi S. Binyomin Ginsberg: 'I just Became a grandchild!'

Barry Rubin: Don't flatter your enemies, protect your friends

Nov. 21, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: Money matters?

Caroline B. Glick: Civilization walks the plank

Nov. 20, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: Bronfman's blindness

The Kosher Gourmet By Linda Gassenheimer: Portobellos add a hearty flavor to pasta with pesto

Nov, 19, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Spread the wealth? Jewish tradition and income equality

Elliot B. Gertel: 'Mad Men': Tackling prejudices or reinforcing them?

Nov, 18, 2008

Dr. Debby Schwarz Hirschhorn: The End of the Age of Reason

Jonathan Tobin: Does Barack + Bibi = Disaster?

Nov, 17, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The End of the Age of Reason

Diana West: Gulling Americans into making terror legit?

Nov, 14, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: The Power of Spiritual Inertia

Caroline B. Glick: The perils ahead

Nov, 13, 2008

Stratfor Intelligence Briefing: How Bush and Obama together could change the Middle East dynamic

The Kosher Gourmet by JeanMarie Brownson: Sweet and savory, crispy and meltingly tender bestilla

Nov, 12, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Tyrannical Co-Workers

Michael Doyle: High Court to consider today donated monuments that may have religious messages in public parks

Nov, 11, 2008

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Will Obama stop government officials considering institutionalizing financial jihad?

Jonathan Tobin: They Will Decide Their Own Fate

Nov, 10, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: $8 billion, modern-day Tower of Babel being built?

Barry Rubin: A letter to the president-elect from a Middle East realist

Nov, 7, 2008

Rabbi Francis Nataf: Of Children and Immortality

Caroline B. Glick: Livni's Obama strategy

Nov, 6, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: How I tricked a classroom of apathetic students into grasping the fallacy of moral relativism

The Kosher Gourmet By Gina Kim: Tips for making the perfect soup --- includes recipes

Nov, 5, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Destitute Debtors

Bruce Weinstein: 'Religulos': Bad title,even worse movie

Nov, 4, 2008

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Treasury Dept. submits to Shariah law

Frida Ghitis: A surprise for Obama in the Middle East

March 22, 2007

J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !)

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Sept. 16, 2008 / 16 Elul 5768

Into the fire

By Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.


Printer Friendly Version
Email this article

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The question on Wall Street in the wake of the latest meltdowns in the U.S. financial sector is "Who's next?" The more important issue is not which of the major banks or investment firms will follow Lehman Brothers into bankruptcy or Merrill Lynch into fire sale. Rather, the question should be "What's next?"


After all, the problem afflicting so much of the U.S. capital markets - and, therefore, those around the world - is not one of individual corporations hitting a rough patch and requiring bail-outs from the federal government or the private sector. It is, instead, the result of a reckless disregard for sound investing practices in the unscrupulous pursuit of profit. In a word, the last "what" was "subprime."


As we all know by now, the practice of building financial houses of cards on various investment instruments based in non-transparent and problematic subprime mortgage-backed securities was a formula for disaster. It induced firms that not only should have known better but are required to behave better to perform unconscionably. In the process, they violated industry standards and government regulations with respect to transparency, disclosure, due diligence, good governance and accountability.


Tragically, in the process of leaping out of the scalding subprime frying pan, Wall Street is heading directly into a fire that promises, if anything, to be more devastating than the present disaster. Incredibly, it bears all the hallmarks of subprime with respect to a lack of transparency, a systematic failure to disclose and an utter absence of due diligence, good governance and accountability. The next "what" is called Shariah-Compliant Finance (SCF).


Shariah, of course, is the term the Islamists use to describe the ruthlessly repressive, totalitarian program they believe should govern every aspect of the lives of faithful Muslims. It is also the instrument they intend to use to rule the world. The first clue that something is wrong with Wall Street's next big thing is that it is Shariah-compliant.


The next clue is how Shariah-Compliant Finance works. Like subprime, it is a black-box, in which management and investors alike are told to trust in the experts. In this case, the experts are Shariah authorities who are accorded exclusive responsibility for determining whether investments are "pure" (halal) and therefore acceptable, or "impure" (haram) and not.


As an important monograph on the subject recently issued by the McCormick Foundation and the Center for Security Policy (for copies contact the Center at www.SecureFreedom.org) makes clear, these authorities are, unsurprisingly, adherents to Shariah. A number of them explicitly embrace its call to jihad (including a former senior member of the Dow Jones Islamic Index, Sheik Taqi Usmani). This "holy war" is to be waged where possible through violent means, where necessary through "soft" means like Shariah-Compliant Finance. For this reason, such Islamists call SCF "financial jihad."


Earlier this year, David Yerushalmi, a litigator specializing in securities law and an expert on Shariah, produced a riveting legal memorandum (soon to appear in the University of Utah Law Review) examining the civil and criminal exposure inherent in Shariah-Compliant Finance (). His conclusion: banks and investment houses offering SCF products may be enabling or engaging in the following: racketeering, anti-trust activity, securities fraud, consumer fraud and/or material support for terror.


What makes Shariah-Compliant Finance even more dangerous than subprime is that, in its effort to legitimize and institutionalize Shariah in America, it is advancing a criminal conspiracy whose purpose is the violent overthrow of the U.S. Constitution and government in favor of Islamic rule. That would make it sedition.


For these reasons, we should be especially wary of the purported silver-lining to the current Wall Street crisis: the infusion of vast quantities of petro-dollars, primarily from OPEC's Saudi Arabia and other Islamist nations in the Persian Gulf. It is bad enough that these putative rescuers of our subprime-fueled liquidity debacle are buying up engines of our capital markets for pennies on the dollar. Worse yet, they are, in the process, putting themselves in a position to promote Shariah-Compliant Finance and the seditious theo-political agenda it serves.


A forthcoming book about SCF by Center for Security Policy Vice President Alex Alexiev offers a further, sobering thought about the fire next time: It is becoming ever-harder to differentiate between the Gulf states' so-called Sovereign Wealth Funds (actually they are the slush funds of the sovereigns) and Shariah-Compliant Finance. The former is increasingly being invested in ways that promote the latter, adding unfathomably large pools of funds to what is estimated already to be an $800 billion global industry.


The Center for Security Policy has sent copies of David Yerushalmi's legal memorandum to the heads of scores of Wall Street firms and the nation's leading commercial banks, warning them of the ominous similarities between subprime and SCF. Interestingly, only the late Merrill Lynch bothered to respond, albeit with a vacuous note blithely affirming its concern about terrorism.


Fortunately, Congress is beginning to recognize the possible peril in what may happen next to Wall Street. Notably, last month, a senior and highly respected member of the Senate Finance Committee, Arizona Republican Jon Kyl, wrote SEC Chairman Chris Cox, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Attorney General Michael Mukasey asking them to respond to Mr. Yerushalmi's analysis of Shariah-Compliant Finance. The question occurs: Will they encourage or discourage the capital markets' leap into the fire via a headlong plunge into subprime on seditious steroids?


Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. heads the Center for Security Policy. Comments by clicking here.

Archives


BUY FRANK'S LATEST
"War Footing: 10 Steps America Must Take to Prevail in the War for the Free World"  

America has been at war for years, but until now, it has not been clear with whom or precisely for what. And we have not been using the full resources we need to win.

With the publication of War Footing, lead-authored by Frank Gaffney, it not only becomes clear who the enemy is and how high the stakes are, but also exactly how we can prevail.

War Footing shows that we are engaged in nothing less than a War for the Free World. This is a fight to the death with Islamofascists, Muslim extremists driven by a totalitarian political ideology that, like Nazism or Communism before it, is determined to destroy freedom and the people who love it. Sales help fund JWR.

© 2006, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.

Insight (Our Columnists)

 Mitch Albom
 Michael Barone
  Dave Barry
 Tony Blankley
 Andy Borowitz
 David Broder
 Stratfor Briefing
 Mona Charen
 Linda Chavez
 Ann Coulter
 Greg Crosby
 Rod Dreher
 Larry Elder
 Suzanne Fields
 John Fund
 Frank J. Gaffney
 Lloyd Garver
 Jonah Goldberg
 Julia Gorin
 Jonathan Gurwitz
 Paul Greenberg
 Victor Davis Hanson
 Betsy Hart
 David Harsanyi
 Nat Hentoff
 David Horowitz
 Laura Ingraham
 Jeff Jacoby
 Paul Johnson
 Jack Kelly
 James Klurfeld
 Ed Koch
 Ch. Krauthammer
 Jonathan Last
 Michael Ledeen
 John Leo
 David Limbaugh
 Kathryn Lopez
 Rich Lowry
 Michelle Malkin
 Jackie Mason
 The Medicine Men
 Dick Morris
 Bill O'Reilly
 Clarence Page
 Kathleen Parker
 Dennis Prager
 Wesley Pruden
 Tom Purcell
 Jonathan Rauch
 Celia Rivenbark
 Robert Robb
 Cokie & Steve Roberts
 Pat Sajak
 Debra J. Saunders
 Culture Shlock
 Roger Simon
 Michael Smerconish
 Thomas Sowell
 Mark Steyn
 John Stossel
 Cal Thomas
 Jonathan Tobin
 Bob Tyrrell
 Diana West
 Dave Weinbaum
 George Will
 Walter Williams
 Mort Zuckerman

'Toons
 Robert Arial
 Chuck Asay
 Chip Bok
 Dry Bones
  Lisa Benson
 John Branch
 Gary Brookins
 John Cole
 J. D. Crowe
 John Deering
 Brian Duffy
 Everything's Relative
 Mallard Fillmore
 Jake Fuller
 Bob Gorrel
 Joe Heller
 David Hitch
 Jerry Holber
 Steve Kelley
 Jeff Koterba
 Dick Locher
 Chan Lowe
 Ranan R. Lurie
 Jimmy Margulies
 Rick McKee
 Michael Ramirez
 Jeff Stahler
 Danna Summers
 John Trever
 Gary Varvel
 Kirk Walters

Lifestyles
 How 2
 Lori Borgman
 The Savvy Consumer
 Elder matters
 Fixit
 Dr. Peter Gott
 Marybeth Hicks
 GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko
 Richard Lederer
 Tech Maven
 Nutrition Myths
 Bruce Williams
 How Stuff Works