London (CNSNews.com) – As the British government considers further plans to tackle extremism, it has also announced that it will soon introduce student loans that comply with Islamic law (shari’a).
At the official opening of the British House of Commons last week, Prime Minister David Cameron’s government promised it would propose several “counter-extremism and safeguarding” laws this parliamentary term.
These would include a new range of court orders to “restrict extremist activity,” action against unregulated schools “which teach hate,” and closing “loopholes” on Internet activity from outside the country.
According to the government, these measures were necessary to protect “vulnerable people” from those who seek to “brainwash them with extremism propaganda.”
The proposals have already aroused fierce opposition among civil liberty and religious groups, who warn that sweeping powers could target a broad swathe of the public.
Meanwhile the Department for Education last week released a report in which it said that college loans compatible with shari’a would be made available to Muslim students once the appropriate legislation had been passed.
Under Islamic law, usury – the collection and payment of interest – is forbidden while excessive risk and heavy borrowing are also shunned. In recent years, some Muslims students have reportedly felt uncomfortable with or been barred from traditional-style loans.
Under this alternative model, the loans would be made available to students from all faiths and not be restricted to Muslims.
Muslim Council of Britain secretary general Shuja Shafi said the government should be commended for the move.
The council – which is said to be the largest Muslim umbrella organization in the United Kingdom, with over 500 affiliated groups, mosques, charities and schools – has been campaigning for such loans for the past 15 years.
“This will undoubtedly pave the way for more students to participate in higher education, and there is no reason why non-Muslims too should not be able to benefit from this as well,” Shafi said.
In 2015, TheCityUK, an industry group that lobbies for British based financial and related professional services, described the United Kingdom as the top western center for Islamic finance.
By 2018, it predicted that the global market for this financial sub-sector would top $3 trillion.
Cameron has long championed the idea of London being a center of shari’a-compliant finance.
Addressing the Ninth World Islamic Economic Forum in 2013, he said that he wanted the city “to stand alongside Dubai and Kuala Lumpur as one of the great capitals of Islamic finance anywhere in the world.”
Since then, his government has introduced state guarantees for shari’a-compliant home mortgages, among other measures. Britain has also become the first country outside the Islamic world to issue sovereign sukuk, the Islamic equivalent of a bond.
Rumy Hasan, a senior lecturer at the University of Sussex and a critic of multiculturalism, said that he did not believe in accommodating separate ethnic and religious groups with different laws.
Hasan said research had shown that this approach did not work with further integrating Muslim communities into Western society, and that the government was making a mistake by promoting it.
“It doesn’t seem to me wise that you allow them separate laws, which will alienate mainstream communities even more,” he said.
As for the proposed counter-extremism legislation, Hasan said he was concerned about how the government would actually define extremism, once details of the proposed law are published.
If the definition was too broad or too loose, he said, many diverse groups could be targeted and freedom of speech could be put at risk.
“They know they have a problem with Islamic extremists, so it seems to me that they’re going to use a very broad brush to pick up Islamic extremists,” Hasan said.
Some critics claim that promotion of shari’a-complaint finance is designed to introduce broader Islamic law principles into Western societies by stealth.