Throughout my life, I can attest to the fact that when God wanted to
help me achieve a goal, He would create an event that made a change in
thesceneorbroughtacertainpersoninmylifetohelpmedoso.WhenI
started thinking of LARIBA, God created the reasons for me to meet the
distinguished pioneer; Sheikh Saleh Abdullah Kamel, the founder of Dal-
lah Al Baraka Group in Saudi Arabia. This man was then (when I met
him in 1987)—and still is until today—one of the most influential, vi-
sionary, and busy Islamic bankers in the world, and one of the most diffi-
cult people to get an appointment with. He happened to be visiting Los
Angeles in mid-1987 and attended a congregational prayer, which I was
leading as an imam. He liked my ceremony, approached me after I fin-
ished, and he said that he wanted to know me. He introduced himself.
I had no idea who he was and what he did. He politely asked that we
meet. I agreed—as I always do with people who approach me. Later, I
asked about him and the person who briefed me did not believe that this
influential Islamic banker had asked me for an appointment. We became
very close family friends. Our mutual respect and appreciation for each
other continues today. I learned a lot about the concepts of Islamic bank-
ing and finance from him and from the many distinguished and highly
accomplished and qualified scholars he was able to assemble from most
of the Muslim world to get RF financing off to a good start in the Gulf,
Europe, and the United States. As if God wanted to add to that gift to
help us in our efforts to realize the vision of popularizing RF banking in
America, God created the reasons for me to meet the father and son
banking attorney team of Mr. Gerald Findley, Esq. and his son Mr. Gary
Steven Findley, Esq.
When we started looking to buy a bank in America, we considered
offering an RF finance window into a regular riba-based conventional
bank. This idea was extremely controversial when it was first implemented
in Malaysia. The issue of major concern was how one could justify, from
the point of view of Shari’aa, owning a financial institution that dealt with
the forbidden riba while at the same time claiming to be active in offering an
RF banking window. In fact, many of the puritans and strict Muslims be-
lieve that this is a clear case of hypocrisy that should never be allowed. This
problem has been investigated at length by a number of jurists and scholars.
It was first investigated in Malaysia and then in the Middle East.^2 However,
after many conversations and ‘‘spot’’ opinion checks with leaders in the
community, we decided to abandon the idea of opening an RF banking win-
dow in a riba-based bank. The problem of dealing with riba-based (conven-
tional) and RF financing models in the same institution troubled many of
the Muslim scholars of Shari’aa and many members of the American Mus-
lim community.
286 THE ART OF ISLAMIC BANKING AND FINANCE