One event, called the "Islamic Finance and Trade Conference", is also co-sponsored by the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB). The MCB is an umbrella organisation which has links with the JI and the Muslim Brotherhood. Since its creation, it has been a platform for Islamists and a vehicle for Islamist-inspired political pressure. It rejected the Muslim Marriage Contract intended to give British Muslim women more rights within Islamic marriage. It has also boycotted Holocaust Memorial Day because it claims, incorrectly, that the event does not mention non-Jewish victims of genocide. This raises serious questions about its claim to be anti-Zionist rather than anti-Semitic. Most recently, it supported its deputy secretary-general, Daud Abdullah, who was heavily criticised for putting his name to a declaration that supported violent jihad against Israel, calling instead for Islam to reign supreme in the region. 

An event in Scotland, "Etisal '09: Scottish Islamic Investment Expo", is organised and sponsored by the Scottish government and a group called the Scottish Islamic Foundation (SIF). The stated aim of the event is to build business links between Scottish banks and businesses and their sharia-compliant counterparts in the OIC countries. The chief executive of the SIF, Osama Saeed, is Scotland's leading Islamist and a Scottish National Party candidate for Glasgow South. 

His sympathy for Islamist principles is well documented. Of particular interest should be his description of the suicide murders of Hamas as "martyrdom operations" (he doesn't use inverted commas) and his assertion that an Islamic Caliphate represents a "perfect and just society" that should be interpreted as some sort of harmless equivalent to the EU. 

Rather than helping those Muslims who work towards adapting Islam to the basic principles of liberal democratic countries, the Saeeds and al-Haddads of this world strive for an exact inversion of this, and sharia banking is now a more significant part of their programme than ever before. It has one effect that is strong and unmistakable: it reinforces the perception of mutual incompatibility between the West and Islam. Muslims and Western governments alike have a duty to weigh this dangerous quality against sharia banking's highly dubious religious and economic credentials, before they dance away to the latest tune of the Islamist pied pipers.