Islamic Banking: Panacea or Fraud? Report of Discussion at the Oxford Union

On 18 February 2015, the Oxford Islamic Banking and Finance Society (IBFS) held a well-attended discussion between Harris Irfan and Tarek El-Diwany at the Oxford Union entitled ‘Our Banking System is Broken - Islamic Banking: Panacea or Fraud?’ IBFS was launched as a new student society at the University of Oxford in 2014, and is dedicated to exploring alternative ways of investing and managing money from an Islamic perspective in a post-financial crisis world.

The first speaker, Harris Irfan, is author of the critically acclaimed ‘Heaven’s Bankers: Inside the Hidden World of Islamic Finance’ which is an insightful narrative about the development of modern Islamic finance through the eyes of a practitioner personally involved in structuring the cu...