The story of the Sharia compliant insurance and asset management sectors was a similar one of strong growth. This pattern was repeated other financial centres with a significant presence of Islamic financial institutions. In the early days of the crisis there was a widespread assumption that Islamic finance would continue this strong growth into the future.
The view of many people in the industry was that it was not at risk from the crisis. The prohibitions on riba and speculation had kept Islamic banks free of the types of structured financial instruments which soon became known as “toxic assets”.