For the former Pakistani President Zia ul-Haq, who was a patron of the JI and supporter of the most violent theocrats of the Afghan mujahideen, the introduction of Islamic economics and banning of interest in 1979 was part of a campaign to implement a strict form of sharia across Pakistan. It is telling that another prong of this illustrious campaign was the enforcement of the Hudud ordinance, which are the harshest sharia-based punishments, applied to crimes such as theft and illicit sex. This led to a situation where married women who were raped were almost always punished severely and often executed. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, "There were hundreds of incidents where a woman subjected to rape, or even gang rape, was eventually accused of Zina [illicit behaviour] and thereby subjected to wrong and unjust persecution and great ordeal." This was recently overturned despite huge protest from the current JI leadership.

In more recent times, sharia finance has been taken up by Europe's leading Islamists, who are enjoying significant success in convincing Muslims and non-Muslims of its merits. Last year, I attended an event called the Global Peace and Unity Conference (GPU), attended by thousands of Muslims at the ExCel exhibition centre in London, despite the fact that its chairman, Mohammed Ali Harrath, was and is the subject of an Interpol Red Notice, and has been convicted in absentia by the Tunisian government for terrorist-related offences. Speakers at the event included sharia advocates, Hamas supporters, Holocaust deniers and 9/11 "truthers". Books on sale included Women Who Deserve to Go to Hell (the answer is: most of them). The event was also attended and addressed by members of all three major political parties. The Conservative MP and Shadow Justice Secretary Dominic Grieve took the opportunity to criticise the organisers, but distressingly the Labour and LibDem contingent, which included party leader Nick Clegg, clambered over each other to pander to extremists and self-appointed representatives of the "British Muslim community". 

Islamic banking, and the Muslim duty of ensuring that all financial arrangements are sharia compliant, was the overarching theme of the GPU. The main speech on the subject was made by Islamist preacher Haitham al-Haddad, famous for his support for Hamas and recommendation that Israeli Jews "go back to their own countries". Al-Haddad held that the cause of the credit crunch was riba, and that the only answer lay in Islam and sharia. He continued, predictably, saying that the solutions to all the world's difficulties lay in sharia and that it was the duty of all Muslims to "pass the message of Islam" around the world or else they will "all be sinful". Al-Haddad ended his speech with the chant, "No to riba! Yes to Islam!" For people like al-Haddad, riba represents all that is wrong and sinful about Western civilisation and it is quite clear what he believes the solution to be.

In October, there will be two major events promoting Islamic finance in the UK. Both will be co-sponsored by sections of the British government and by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which has long promoted Islamic banking and is best known for its recent attempts to strangle free speech around the world by trying to force UN member states to abide by its Combating Defamation of Religions resolution.