A quick glance at retail banking in Islamic finance hubs like Bahrain, UAE, Malaysia, reveals that the Islamic finance industry has not surpassed 30 per cent market share. In Malaysia, the majority of Islamic finance customers are not Muslims but ethnic-Chinese. On that basis, how does the industry take the seemingly success of Islamic finance in Malaysia to UK?
Economic immigrants
The majority of the UK Muslim's are from the Indian subcontinent (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc). They came seeking better economic opportunities, education for their children, and upward mobility. These immigrants came from countries where Islamic finance was, at best, more of a theory and less of a practice in the 1960s and 1970s. Finally, the UK Islamic banking experience, from Albaraka to United Bank of Kuwait to (now) Islamic Bank of Britain, resulted in a general levelled regulatory and tax playing field, but even that has not opened the floodgates to Islamic finance. Why?
