Next 4 february 2018,at IE Business School, Madrid, Spain

Professor Torkel Brekke, University of Oslo, will give a Lecture at the SCIEF about the research project FINEX, designed to find out to what extent Islamic norms about money & finance result in the exclusion of Muslims from the financial system in the European Nordic countries:

Money and finance have been regarded as major moral problems in all the world religions. The past few decades have seen a revival in Islamic thinking about banking and finance. Some Muslims believe that modern banks are usurious and immoral and they work to create Islamic banks as an alternative. While Islamic banking is big in the Middle East and Southeast Asia it has had little success in the West so far. The research project FINEX is designed to find out to what extent Islamic norms about money and finance result in the exclusion of Muslims from the financial system in the four Nordic countries of Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. Such financial exclusion could have potential consequences for the economic integration and the wellbeing of a significant number of people. For instance, we believe that some Muslims may experience disadvantages in the housing market because they avoid bank loans.