the services and whom you know owns it...

Been doing some digging. FCB is a Sharia bank. Apparently even non-muslims can bank there. There website says they offer loans and do not charge interest. There must be a catch somewhere...surely...

@Incognito, what they do is trade with your money by financing some other business. They however only share profits made from that business instead of charging interest. I am not sure how they earn their profit if I am borrowing to buy a car for personal use as opposed to trading

Simple:

You want some money to buy an asset worth, say, 1m.

You go to the bank for 'help'; you show them the seller and they buy the asset in their name for 1m.

Then they sell the same asset to you for, say, 1.5m, but allow you to pay in installments over 5 years.

the extra 0.5m that you will pay is called their PROFIT.

In a regular bank, it would be called INTEREST and the numbers would probably work out to exactly the same amount.

Hiyo ni kucheza na maneno tu!!

The one big difference between sharia banks and regular ones is that sharia banks do not put money into T-Bills & Bonds. Their law does not allow them to charge or pay interest.

In the kawaida banks you borrow money and are charged interest, what this means is that money is treated as a commodity, hence the interest on it.The banks issuing this loans cannot do a trail on what the money lent was used for . This is what sharia law is saying no to. Money is not a commodity but a tool that is used to acquire something e.g a house car etc. A trail can be used by the bank to say the money we lent Rryzz was actually used to purchase a house/ car etc i.e Money is a means and not an end in itself