By TCN News,
Oxford, UK: The Oxford Union and the Oxford Islamic Banking and Finance Society will be hosting a panel discussion by Harris Irfan and Tarek el-Diwany on February on how Islamic finance can or cannot fit into the spectrum of solutions with which to deal with the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.
They will be talking about the merits of Islamic finance as we try to find solutions and new economic models for the banking sector to utilize in order to increase their accountability. Is Islamic finance an effective profit-generating alternative to mainstream financial negotiations? Is sharia-compliant banking simply a way to bypass the rules? Can economic issues be resolved by Islamic finance? These and other questions will be explored by the two panellists.
Harris Irfan is currently the Head of investment banking at the European Islamic Investment Bank and the founder of the Islamic finance advisory firm at Cordoba Capital. He was formerly the global head of Islamic finance at the Barclays Group and the former CEO of Deutche’s Islamic subsidiary. He has also written a book titled Heaven’s Bankers: Inside the Hidden World of Islamic Finance, which grapples with the feasibility of applying Islamic finance to the economy.
Tarek el-Diwany established Fulton Prebon’s Islamic finance department in 1995 and is the presenter of the 2009 documentary titled “Why are we All in Debt?”. El-Diwany has been working as a consultant and researcher in the Islamic finance field since 1998. He is also the author of The Problem with Interest, which provides a commentary on the current state of the modern financial system and the Islamic alternative.