Islam-Based Business In America

Today's Washington Post, has a neat special report on "Faith" in the United States. One of the subjects raised in this report deals with the new trend of market faith-based philosophy and particularly the one related to Islam and Muslims in the USA.

Management and investing courses [..] are an example of what scholars say is a new phase for the U.S. Muslim immigrant community, which once consisted mostly of engineers, academics, doctors and other professionals. As the community grows larger and more heavily populated by business people, it is creating its own financial culture.

The trend is part of an effort to build an indigenous "American Islam," said Yvonne Haddad, who studies Islam in the West and teaches the history of the faith at Georgetown University. Muslim immigrants, who began coming to the United States in large numbers in the 1960s and '70s, "are trying to engage in the economic sphere . . . and this is an effort to help them feel comfortable engaging in business."