{"id":697,"date":"2009-02-11T08:57:14","date_gmt":"2009-02-11T08:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/why-islamic-investment-funds-b.html"},"modified":"2009-02-11T08:57:14","modified_gmt":"2009-02-11T08:57:14","slug":"why-islamic-investment-funds-b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/why-islamic-investment-funds-b.html","title":{"rendered":"Why Islamic Investment Funds Beat the Stock Market"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was half kidding a few months ago when I suggested Islamic sharia law to shape up the stock exchange<\/a>. It turns out I wasn’t far off. Apparently, Islamic investment funds have beaten the market of late. The two Amana Growth and Income funds beat the S&P 500 by 13% and 7% respectively.
\nThe San Francisco Chronicle explains:<\/a><\/p>\n

“Renouncing interest is the high-profile element of Islamic finance that relates to the current economic crisis. For Islamically correct investors, that means there are limits to how much debt a company can have or how much profit it can derive from interest-based investments. That criterion eliminated the possibility of holding stocks in financial services companies, like Citigroup or Washington Mutual, whose stocks lost 86 percent or all of their value last year, respectively.
\nIslamic finance also prohibits selling assets you don’t own, selling someone’s debt and engaging in high-risk investments. Thus, there was no participation in practices that have been blamed for Wall Street’s meltdown: complex derivatives trading, short-selling and the $30 trillion market in credit default swaps.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was half kidding a few months ago when I suggested Islamic sharia law to shape up the stock exchange. It turns out I wasn’t far off. Apparently, Islamic investment funds have beaten the market of late. The two Amana Growth and Income funds beat the S&P 500 by 13% and 7% respectively. The San…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy Islamic Investment Funds Beat the Stock Market - Steven Waldman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/why-islamic-investment-funds-b.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why Islamic Investment Funds Beat the Stock Market - Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I was half kidding a few months ago when I suggested Islamic sharia law to shape up the stock exchange. It turns out I wasn’t far off. Apparently, Islamic investment funds have beaten the market of late. The two Amana Growth and Income funds beat the S&P 500 by 13% and 7% respectively. The San…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/why-islamic-investment-funds-b.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-02-11T08:57:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"swaldman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Why Islamic Investment Funds Beat the Stock Market - Steven Waldman","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/why-islamic-investment-funds-b.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Why Islamic Investment Funds Beat the Stock Market - Steven Waldman","og_description":"I was half kidding a few months ago when I suggested Islamic sharia law to shape up the stock exchange. It turns out I wasn’t far off. Apparently, Islamic investment funds have beaten the market of late. The two Amana Growth and Income funds beat the S&P 500 by 13% and 7% respectively. The San…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/why-islamic-investment-funds-b.html","og_site_name":"Steven Waldman","article_published_time":"2009-02-11T08:57:14+00:00","author":"swaldman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/why-islamic-investment-funds-b.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/why-islamic-investment-funds-b.html","name":"Why Islamic Investment Funds Beat the Stock Market - Steven Waldman","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-02-11T08:57:14+00:00","dateModified":"2009-02-11T08:57:14+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/why-islamic-investment-funds-b.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/why-islamic-investment-funds-b.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/why-islamic-investment-funds-b.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Why Islamic Investment Funds Beat the Stock Market"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/","name":"Steven Waldman","description":"Author of 'Founding Faith'","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded","name":"swaldman","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","caption":"swaldman"},"description":"Steven Waldman is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of Beliefnet. He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Review, The Atlantic, Slate, and many others.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/author\/swaldman"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}