Islamic finance in the UK
Islamic finance is worth $1.3 trillion globally and the UK wants a piece of the pie.
The problem is that if you talk about introducing Sharia law to this country then you start a panic in the right wing media about hands being chopped off and Western values being undermined.
The tenets of Islamic finance are much simpler than that and are a far cry from public lashings. In actual fact Sharia law prohibits the payment of interest on loans and so things like mortgages operate in a slightly different way in the Muslim world.
The normal operation UK law would discriminate against Islamic finance by requiring more tax to be paid but since the Finance Act 2003 a umber of exceptions have been carved out in order to level the playing field. In this week's episode of the podcast the Supreme Court has to work out whether one of these exceptions has gone too far by allowing Muslims to avoid paying stamp duty (a tax on land purchases) altogether.
As part of our analysis we also consider how the law in this area could be simplified and just how far the UK should go in its bid to attract lucrative investment from the Middle East.
Episode link: http://uklawweekly.com/2018-uksc-30/
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