ABSTRACT
By the late seventies and early eighties, it could be observed that the so-called Islamic banking had ‘taken off in various parts of the Muslim world (cf. Wilson, 1983:80-98). Although it is too simplistic to argue that ‘the boom in oil exports has, more than anything else, caused the recent Islamic resurgence’ (Pipes, 1982:45), there is little doubt that the financial and political self-confidence brought about by the oil boom has enabled people in the Gulf countries in particular and in the Muslim world in general to begin to think about trying to do things their own way, and to seek a distinctive place for Muslim countries within the emerging ‘new international economic order’ (cf. ICO: 1982). Indeed, under the leadership of Saudi Arabia, the conservative Arab regimes have, during the third quarter of this century, invested a great deal in developing an ‘Islamic’ policy that they used as a means for gaining influence and power within the Third World through institutions such as the Islamic Conference Organisation (ICO) and its affiliates. The efficacy of this policy was made easier by the relative state of stagnation that had overtaken the non-aligned movement in the Third World around the same time (cf. ‘Abd al-Malik ‘Awda, 1988: Chapter VI, Section 6). Such a policy was also able to acquire an important ‘financial’ dimension following the oil boom of 1973-1974. As is already well known, Arab OPEC countries had in 1980 an aggregate surplus of US $120 billion, and considerable reserves were available to individual natives of these countries and to millions of expatriate personnel working in them. New outlets were obviously needed for investing these funds.
