[LINK] "Russian Church Becomes Islamic-Finance Ally as Sanctions Hurt"

[rfmcdonald]

Daria Solovieva and Rinat Gaynullin at Bloomberg note how some Russians are interested in the concepts behind Islamic finance, both on their own terms and as a way to access much-needed capital.

Advocates of Islamic finance in Russia have a powerful new friend: the country’s biggest church.

After Russia’s finance ministry rejected a draft law last month that would have paved the way for more so-called alternative finance, including Shariah-compliant transactions, the Russian Orthodox Church said it’s working with the lower house of Parliament and consulting with experts in a bid to develop a system of finance that eschews the payment of interest.

Support from the Orthodox Church is a boon to the Islamic finance lobby. The more than 500-year-old institution represents the predominant faith of Russia’s 142 million population, of which 15 percent are Muslims, while its influence has thrived under the rule of President Vladimir Putin. New types of finance are increasingly attracting the backing of Russia’s banks as the country heads for its first recession since 2009 amid U.S. and European sanctions imposed over the Ukraine conflict.

“The ethical underpinnings of true Islamic finance would be appealing to the Orthodox Church,” Emad Mostaque, a London-based strategist at emerging-markets consultancy company Ecstrat Ltd. in London, said by e-mail on June 2. “As Western sanctions continue, tapping into the $1.3 trillion of Islamic capital has become increasingly appealing to Russia.”

[. . .]

“It’s good that the topic of alternative financing is being discussed in Russia,” Vsevolod Chaplin, spokesman of church, also known as the Moscow Patriarchate, said in a phone interview from Moscow on May 27. “Over centuries Christians started paying less attention to this principle than Muslims, but I think that today we should look at this more carefully.”