Rabi-ul-Awwal 1422H
June 2001
Volume 15-06 No:174
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Rabi-ul-Awwal 1422H June 2001 Volume 15-06 No:174 |
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Washington, D.C. : The Los Angeles based interest-free investment company ‘Lariba’ has entered into a partnership with Freddie Mac Corporation which deals in residential houses. Though the acronym ‘Lariba’ stands for Los Angeles Reliable Investment Bankers Associates, in Arabic it means interest free. Lariba and Freddie Mac would henceforth devise a financial strategy to provide houses to customers wishing to avoid the element of interest.
Most people in the US buy houses from investment companies that collect monthly installments together with interest. Interest being prohibited in Islam, several Muslims face the dilemma between either paying down interest or renting the houses which is not usually the norm in the country and works out costly too. Freddie Mac has inked the deal with Lariba in order to work out provision for such Muslims who would like to buy houses even while owning them but without the element of interest. According to Abdul Majid Aati, president of Lariba, the two companies have taken special note of a large section of Muslims who chase the American dream of owning the house but without indulging in the conventional practice of paying interest. Lariba has been running such a scheme in California and 14 other states wherein the houses can be obtained at far easier rates than the usual. Under Lariba housing schemes, the buyers would though become owners with the first installments, the company retains control till the payment of the final installments.
Freddie Mac would be investing a million dollar into the Lariba housing scheme initially.
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Boston: The Harvard Islamic Finance Information Program (HIFIP) invites papers for its fifth Forum to be held on October 6-7 this year on the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts in USA. The papers should be on Sharia perspectives on patents, properties and copyrights laws, financial instruments, theories of Islamic Finance and Economics, Ethical/Faith-based Investments, Islamic Equities, Consumer Perspectives, Takaful and Insurance, Microcredit Opportunities and Product Innovation.
Potential presenters are requested to e-mail their CV, list of related publications and 150-word abstract of their proposed paper. More details can be had from HIFIP website: http://www.hifip.harvard.edu. The registration form can also be downloaded from the site.
HIFIP was founded in 1995 as an academic research program at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts to increase understanding of the growing field of Islamic finance and investment. The HIFIP DataBank, the Forum, commissioned research and the Program’s other activities help provide much needed information on Islamic finance to students, researchers, and the Program’s institutional members worldwide.
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Jakarta, IINA: The Jeddah-based Islamic Development Bank (IDB) is expected to buy Indonesian Mandiri Syariah Bank’s shares to the tune of 75 billion Rupiah (about US$7.15 million), according to the latter bank’s director general, Nurdin Hasibuan. The Indonesian Shari’a bank was set up just two years ago, and the acquisition of shares by the IDB will give it an added boost to its capital base, and it would also reduce the state’s stake in the Mandiri Syariah Bank, which would be based on profit-sharing.
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