The steady rise of Islamic finance: BBC

One of the world's leading experts on Islamic finance, Sheikh Hussain Hassan, argues the whole crisis in Western banking could have been avoided if these basic sharia principles had been followed.
"$600 trillion were wasted on options, futures and derivatives, all gambling. Sharia prohibited these kind of risks 14 centuries back," he said in an article posted on the BBC website.
The article noted that London has become one of the biggest centres for Islamic finance in the world, with five Islamic banks, and many others in the high street offering Islamic financial products, or "windows" as they are known, adding that the growth of Islamic finance has been an unexpected outcome of the attacks on the World Trade Center of 11 September 2001.
Farmida Bi, a partner at London-based law firm Norton Rose, told the report that London has attracted this kind of investment because the British government wooed Islamic money in the wake of 9/11, at the expense of the US.
"It was really September 11th that made being a Muslim a political statement and not just a matter of personal faith," she said.
"And with the Patriot Act, which made investments in the US difficult for many Islamic investors, there was a significant increase in Islamic investors choosing to invest in Islamic institutions and Islamic products."