The Halal Times
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UK Islamic Banks are expanding services to cater for London based property financing demand. QIB UK, part of the Qatar Islamic Bank group, and Al Rayan bank a UK subsidiary of Qatar based Masraf Al Rayan have both recently expanded offices and services to meet demand. QIB Begins offering Murabaha Facilities QIB-UK, has begun providing …
Turkey and Indonesia are working on a lender project that will operate in compliance with Islamic law. Though talks are ongoing, the project titled “megabank” is expected to contribute to Turkey’s aim to expand the share of participation banking in the Turkish financial sector. Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Şimşek, who held a meeting with the …
Path Solutions, an international core banking system provider for the Islamic financial services industry, today announced that its Group Chairman & CEO, Mohammed Kateeb, was named ‘Best Islamic Finance Technology CEO of the Year EMENA 2017’ by Global Banking & Finance Review. Member of UK-based GBAF Publications Ltd, Global Banking & Finance Review is a …
A legal “fighting fund” is planned by the Halal Food Authority (HFA), the certification body, to meet what it said was an increasing number of malicious attacks on the sector. The initiative was announced by Saqib Mohammed, chief executive of the HFA on the first day of its two-day conference, held in London last month. …
Al Rayan Bank has opened a new office in London’s West End to support its growing commercial finance business. The expansion follows the appointment of two new recruits from Nationwide Building Society in April, which increased the bank’s commercial property team to 11 frontline staff. Commercial property financing was the fastest-growing element of Al Rayan …
From Istanbul to London and Dubai to New York, in the last decade, the modest fashion industry is beginning to gain recognition by mainstream brands in the West. After the world’s largest online modest fashion retailer, Modanisa debuted their annual fashion week in Istanbul last year, London Modest Fashion Week (LMFW) hit the catwalks at …
PARAMARIBO, Suriname — In a major boost to the housing sector of Suriname, the Islamic Development Bank (ISDB) has approved a US$35 million loan to support the shortage of affordable housing in Suriname. It is an issue that has been at the forefront of President Desi Bouterse’s campaign pledge. The loan was approved on Monday …
The Muslim fashion industry is making a buzz around the world. This industry can potentially lay claim to represent nearly 2 billion Muslims around the world. Naturally, it is a huge market segment, one that offers $200 billion estimated sales in a year and is gearing towards hitting the $250 billion mark by 2020. Seeing the …
The recent MLE Connect 2017 Muslim lifestyle event at 155 Bishopsgate, in London, was the UK’s biggest B2B conference discussing the Muslim lifestyle sector, according to organisers. Retailers such as Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Nationwide joined entrepreneurs and 200 businesses represented at the event. Delegates also came from abroad, from the UAE, Turkey, Malaysia and …
Undertaken by parenting site ChannelMum.com, eight out of ten mothers (82%) said having more Muslim families in ads could boost cultural and religious understanding. Of the Muslim respondents, nearly six out of ten (58%) feel “excluded by brands”, while a quarter (26%) worry that the lack of visibility could hurt their children. A fifth (21%) …
A Wigan fashionista has broken onto the global scene with a pioneering clothing range to cater for all races and religions. Yasmin Sobeih, 26, from Standish, launched her modest sportswear range at this year’s “Muslim Lifestyle Show” in London after securing financial backing from the Government. “UNDER-RAPT”, Yasmin’s athleisure brand was derived from the fashion …
There’s an old saying in the Islamic world that “the Quran was revealed in Mecca, recited in Egypt, and written in Istanbul.” Istanbul calligraphers were the pick of the litter in Ottoman times, and their legacy continues to be felt today, undercover in hidden galleries and workshops, beneath the veneer of modern Istanbul. Many art schools in Istanbul have …
QIB-UK, a wholly owned subsidiary of QIB Group, has received official licensing to directly provide Sharia-compliant Murabaha Facilities for London properties which are intended for own use. This new product enables QIB-UK to finance a buy-to-live property as well as refinance customers’ existing properties in London. The new license that the Bank has gained is …
What would Elon Musk do? London-based Nafisa Bakkar asked herself this question when deciding if she should quit her job as an entrepreneurship co-ordinator and launch a fashion website for Muslim women. “Elon Musk wouldn’t take the job!” says London-based Bakkar, 24, “but I was scared because if I left the job I’d actually have …
The Board at Blidensol nursing home in Stavanger makes a u-turn in the hijab case and will now allow employees to wear a hijab at work. Board member Thomas Middelthon at the nursing home shows that both the Equality ombudsman and the Equality and Anti-Discrimination Tribunal have ruled that it is unlawful to deny employees …
Ummah Finance aims to be “the first UK born Islamic bank solely set up and operating from London”, with a fully digital proposition. Whilst there are 40 banking services currently offering Islamic banking solutions in the UK, “none of these offer a fully mobile AND 100% Sharia-compliant banking service”, Ummah Finance claims. “Our ambition is …
VIENNA: A debate is raging in Austria after a study suggested that Islamic kindergartens in Vienna were helping to create “parallel societies”. According to its author, Ednan Aslan, a Turkish-born Austrian professor at Vienna University, some 10,000 children aged two to six attend around 150 Muslim preschools, teaching the Holy Quran much like Christian ones …
In its quest to cement London’s status as one of the leading Islamic finance centres in the Western world in the wake of a looming Brexit, the UK’s financial regulation is keen to promote the market with new tools and innovative products that are Shariah-complaint. One of those is a liquidity tool newly developed by …
Istanbul:- Recently, Istanbul witnessed some thing which was unthinkable some twenty years ago. Fashion designers from across the globe attended a modest Muslim fashion show in the town where the models showed Islamic dresses only. Tureky`s growing conservative elites participated in the show. The models appeared on the stage while covered from head to toe. …
Zurich Insurance has been given the go-ahead to take full control of MAA Takaful in Malaysia. MAA Takaful had been a joint venture between MAA Group Berhad (formerly known as MAA Holdings Berhad) and Solidarity Company BSC (C) of Bahrain. The Shari’ah-compliant insurer had been established through a joint venture agreement in 2006. On 2 …
Istanbul:- The Turkish government has chosen Murat Çetinkaya, a deputy Central Bank governor, to be the Bank’s new governor, Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmuş announced on April 11 after a cabinet meeting led by Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu in Şanlıurfa on April 11. The term of current Governor Erdem Başçı was due to expire on …
Global brands are waking up to the massive opportunities of the worldwide Muslim market but many still misunderstand or ignore the potential of a burgeoning sector that is young, highly educated and collectively has enormous spending power. The world’s 1.6 billion Muslims constitute a largely untapped commercial market, the Muslim Lifestyle Expo conference in London …
London:- The team at Nature’s Well Laboratories performed an exhaustive review of the state of the nutritional supplement market in the UK as it relates to Halal Certifications. The results were indeed eye-opening, as it turned out that people in the Muslim community have been completely overlooked, and they wanted to change that. It turns …
Australia needs sharia-compliant financing if it is to be a regional financial services power. Malaysia and the UK are showing the way. Imagine a global industry in these volatile and bruising times where it is considered a disappointment that growth might drop to single digits this year for the first time in more than a …
