Maybe it's sour grapes because they rejected my abstract! Maybe they won't next time, because there may be very little left of the conventional system left to discuss....
Both the greater part of that seminar and virtually the entire conventional Islamic Finance "industry" apply an Islamic veneer to an UnIslamic reality: or a "'halal' window on a 'haram' palace" as I have heard it said.
A small number of very highly paid scholars apply a great deal of sophistry to justify the unjustifiable. It is a situation which reminds me irresistibly of the purchasing of 'indulgences' which was one of the factors which led to the Reformation.
A Bear of Little Islamic Brain, like me, finds it impossible to see - from my relatively restricted reading to date in the three years since I discovered that what I advocate actually is Islamic finance - how "Money as Debt" and any kind of "leverage" or "gearing" can ever be compatible with Islam.
But as I have often said, I think that in fact "Ethical is Optimal", and if so, the philosophical question which follows:
"Is Ethics a subset of Islam; or Islam a subset of Ethics; or is it all One?"
And so back to a second glass of wine.... "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
There are useful truths at the core of all religions. Different ways of looking at living. But the Islamic stance on usury is a special case - however sullied it is now, in practice.
The question is: what is a bank? You can't be me, I'm taken
