Minneapolis funds Sharia compliant loans to Muslims

Creeping Sharia in America

• The liberal loons in Minneapolis offer special loans to Muslims while Christians, Jews, Hindus etc must use regular loan financing. 
• Equal treatment under the Constitution has no meaning to the ever pandering Leftists.

Minneapolis has loaned more than $1 million to Muslim business owners through a program that complies with sharia law, which prohibits Muslims from paying or earning interest in a financial transaction.

The program, which is operated in partnership with the African Development Center, makes Minneapolis the only city in the country to offer Islamic financing at a time when states are trying to ban sharia from the courts. "Minneapolis is a very welcoming city," says Kristin Guild, the city's business development manager. "Because [Somali immigrants] wear headscarves, they are visible as entrepreneurs and people see that they are setting up businesses in our town and creating jobs."

Minnesota is home to the country's largest Somali community, which is predominantly Sunni Muslim. An estimated 32,000 people of Somali ancestry live in the state, and about one-third of them live in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, according to the latest census figures reports the National Journal.

In the past 10 years, North African immigrants have opened teashops, pharmacies, and child-care centers in southwest Minneapolis storefronts that were once boarded up. But many of these entrepreneurs struggled to grow their businesses because Islamic law forbids Muslims from earning or paying interest, known as riba. So they couldn't take out loans or participate in the city's low-interest financing program for small businesses.

"We had to be creative to meet the demand," says Nasibu Sareva, executive director of the nonprofit African Development Center, which brought the idea of creating an Islamic financing program to the city in early 2006. City leaders were unaware of the sharia restriction, but agreed to the plan. Less than a year later, the city's community and economic development department launched the sharia-compliant Alternative Financing Program.

This is how it works: A barber who needs new chairs for his shop goes to the African Development Center or another nonprofit lender that has partnered with the city. The lending partner buys the chairs, splitting the cost with the city, and then resells the chairs to the barber at a 2 percent profit. The barber pays it off in monthly installments. This is called a Murabaha sale.

We can't wait to move to Minnesota.