Thursday, January 05, 2006

Muslim Only Banking?

Via Michelle Malkin:
A bank that has been offering special services for Muslims for two years has now formed a subsidiary to focus solely on the religious group.

The Ann Arbor-based University Bank has created University Islamic Financial Corp. to offer Muslims home financing, deposit accounts and Islamic mutual fund shares.

"The formation of the subsidiary allows us to have a financial institution which is 100 percent in compliance with the Muslim Shariah, the legal code of the Islamic religion," bank President and Chairman Stephen Lange Ranzini told The Ann Arbor News for a Saturday story.
You know what? Univerity Bank has been rated Outstanding by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation for Community Service and Community Reinvestment. If FDIC insures a bank that has a program exclusively for Muslims, is there a Church-State issue? (Or a Mosque-State issue, as the case may be?) FannieMae buys the MALT product according to this from the bank itself. Is that going to get the ACLU's shorts in a knot?

UPDATE: There's further conversation at Right Voices (grazie for the link); Clarity & Resolve had this a couple days ago (sorry for the munged up trackback to the wrong article).

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