Lack of standards hurts Islamic finance

The $500 billion Islamic finance sector is large enough to attract serious attention from the UK government, which recently made changes to its tax law to enable Muslims who object to the payment or receipt of interest to access Islamic personal financial services such as mortgages and savings accounts.

But even as the industry embraces corporate social responsibility standards, Standard & Poor's estimates that the sector forgoes about 10 percent in annual growth in the absence of common guidelines for the interpretation of Sharia.

Thanks to Blake Goud for the pointer.