Seattle is known for its famous coffee (or infamous, depending on your point of view), its pointy thing that towers over the city, its often cloudy and temperate weather, and being the birthplace of grunge.
It seems that Seattle Gen-Xers aren’t the only ones feeling some angst. According to a recent proposal intended to make housing more affordable that Seattle’s mayor Ed Murray and his housing committee presented, the Muslim community in town doesn’t like paying interest or fees on loans. It goes against their religion, which affects their ability to obtain loans to buy a home, apparently. So now Mayor Murray is doing what he can to accommodate them.
From his proposal:
Support the Community in Finding Housing Tools for Sharia-Compliant Lending: For our low – and moderate – income Muslim neighbors who follow Sharia law – which prohibits the payment of interest or fees for loans of money – there are limited options for financing a home. Some Muslims are unable to use conventional mortgage products due to religious convictions. The City will convene lenders, housing nonprofits and community leaders to explore the best options for increasing access to Sharia-compliant loan products to help these residents become homeowners in Seattle.
Isn’t that nice? It’s quite considerate of progressive leaders to take religious convictions into account when developing public policy. We shouldn’t hear any more talk from them about regulating Christian institutions in matters such as birth control, abortion, or marriage. Nor should there be any problems for business owners who tell customers to seek business elsewhere when the customers’ demands are incompatible with the religious convictions of those business owners.
Of course, if this plan comes to fruition, a lot of folks might just convert to Islam so they can buy a home without paying those abominable mortgage fees. Perhaps they won’t even need to go to that length. Just identify as Muslim, and yippeee, no interest payments on your home loan! What are lenders and authorities going to do to verify the faith of loan applicants–come to their homes to see if they have prayer rugs? That seems pretty invasive. People have an expectation of privacy in their beautiful new homes, you know.
USA Today noted last year that laws of the state complying with religious sharia law is big business internationally:
Big and small investors are increasingly dipping their toes in the world of Shariah-compliant financing, a sector that has grown to more than $1.6 trillion in assets worldwide over the past three decades. It’s one that analysts see as having the potential for even greater growth as the Muslim population grows in the U.S. and Europe.
Earlier this month, Luxembourg issued a $254 million, five-year Islamic bond, known as sukuk. Meanwhile, Hong Kong last month completed its first sale of Islamic debt raising $1 billion. That came after Britain in June became the first Western nation to issue sukuk, an Arabic word that roughly translates as “certificates.”
Sukuk act much like traditional bonds, delivering payments to investors until maturity.To comply with Sharia, the bonds have to be tied to some sort of physical asset. Instead of interest, investors are being rewarded with a share of the profit derived from the asset.
Huh. I wonder if the anti-capitalists know about this. It must be all good as long as it’s a protected class that is making those big, wicked moneymaking predatory lenders bigger. Yet those who practice the law of Christianity, by far the most dominant religion in our nation, are progressively losing their ability to exercise their own beliefs.
There is also the idea that sharia-compliant business practices could be used by some whose intentions are less than honorable, as Fox News noted:
In 2008, conservative lawmakers in Congress went after American International Group for offering Sharia-compliant insurance programs.
Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., and then-Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., sent AIG then-Chairman Edward Liddy a strongly worded letter that argued Sharia financing could be manipulated and used by terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda and Hamas to launder money.
“You may defend your decision to offer Sharia products and will probably state that they have no real ties to Sharia law, and therefore pose no threat. You are wrong,” the lawmakers wrote in the Dec. 18, 2008 letter. “Like Britain, the way to America’s legal code is through its wallet, and if Sharia law gains a strong footing in the United States, it will be through Sharia finance and Sharia products.”
We’ve been warned about the creep of sharia into America. How many signs do we need that it has begun? The word’s right there in the Mayor of Seattle’s proposal. According to an Executive Director at the Washington state chapter of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, this willing submission is to satisfy a couple of hundred Muslims, with the Muslim population growing steadily in this country.
Oh, don’t worry. This is the extent to which sharia will go in America, we can be sure.
Sure. Yyyeah.
h/t: CNS News via FreedomRecon
Added: lest we forget another thing that the City of Seattle is known for–contraceptive procedures performed on minors without parental notification.
