According to JWT, a well-known American advertising agency, food, finance and packaged goods are the three consumer markets most affected by Islamic law. Islamic finance, which is essentially premised on Islamic principles governing trade, banking and investment, is steadily gathering momentum across large parts of the world, including Europe, North America and Australasia. Islamic finance embraces a wide range of institutions and products, including Islamic banks, Islamic investment companies, Islamic investment banks and Islamic e-commerce. The products include insurance securities, mutual funds, Islamic bonds and stocks. Islamic finance is no longer a niche business and is increasingly becoming a mainstream component of the global banking system.

Currently, more than 300 Islamic financial institutions exist in 75 countries across the world with an asset holding size of $280 billion. Standard and Poor’s, an international rating agency, puts the market for Islamic financial markets at about $700 billion. At present, investments in Islamic financial products represent just about 1 per cent of the global financial market, but the segment has grown at some 15% annually in the past three years and was worth $1,000 billion in 2010. In the UK it has grown to more than £ 500 million.

The global market for Islamic bonds, or sukuk, experienced a positive and healthy growth in 2010. According to report by Standard and Poor’s, Islamic bonds issues reached a record $51.2 billion in 2010, an increase of 34% from 2007. The value of Islamic bonds issued in the Gulf alone rose to 61% in 2010, with issuances valuing $7 billion in 2009-2010, compared to $4.3 billion in the previous year. By mid-February 2011, more than $16 billion worth had already been issued worldwide since the beginning of the year.

Malaysia remains the key driving force in the sukuk market, accounting for nearly 78% or 39.8 billion of total issuances in 2010, followed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE.

Since the publication of the report Islamophobia: A Challenge to Us All by the Runnymede Commission in 1997, the term Islamophobia has gained wide currency in academic discourse and in the media in Britain and other European countries as well as in the United States. The report defined Islamophobia as “an outlook or worldview involving an unfounded dread and dislike of Muslims, which results in practices of exclusion and discrimination”. A report of the Council of Europe entitled Islamophobia and its Consequences for Young People (2005) described Islamophobia as “the fear of or prejudiced viewpoint towards Islam, Muslims and matters pertaining to them. Whether it takes the shape of daily forms of racism and discrimination or more violent forms, Islamophobia is a violation of human rights and a threat to social cohesion”.

Islamophobia is manifested in various forms, including assaults on Muslims, attacks on mosques and cemeteries, abuses and obscenities hurled at Muslims and humiliation of Muslims with conspicuous Islamic features such as the headscarf and beard.

The far-right political parties in Britain, especially the British National Party, thrive on fanning people’s primordial sentiments and Islamophobic passions. The BNP often takes advantage of sensitive issues and fans racist and xenophobic sentiments in the majority population in order to draw political advantage. A recent report of the Commission for Racial Equality in Britain has pointed out that racial discrimination is still a reality in the country and that Britain continues to be racially divided. The report notes that Britain remains a place of “inequality, exclusion and isolation”.

Strangely, despite the prevailing atmosphere of Islamophobia, the number of Britons embracing Islam has nearly doubled in the past decade. A new study by the inter-faith think tank Faith Matters suggests that the number of Britons who have entered the fold of Islam is as high as 100,000, with 5,000 new conversions each year. The estimate is based on a variety of sources, including the 2001 Scottish census, data from mosques and local authority data.

The converts include many prominent persons and intellectuals, including Martin Lings, a former Keeper of Oriental Manuscripts at the British Museum, Yusuf Islam, the former pop singer Kete Stevens, Timothy J. Winter, an Oxford scholar, Yahya Birt, the son of BBC’s former chief, and Joe Ahmad Dobson, the son of a former cabinet minister in Britain.

Hana Tajima, fashion designer, converted to Islam when she was 17. Reminiscing about the things about Islam that brought her into the fold of Islam, she says: “ The fact that the Qur'an is the same now as it ever was means there's always a reference point. The issues of women's rights were shockingly contemporary. The more I read, the more I found myself agreeing with the ideas behind it and I could see why Islam coloured the lives of my Muslim friends. It made sense, really, I didn't and still don't want to be Muslim, but there came a point where I couldn't say that I wasn't Muslim.”

Denise Horsley, a dance teacher, was introduced to Islam by her Muslim boyfriend. Reflecting on her conversion, she says, “During Ramadan I'd sit and listen to the Qur'anic recitations and would be filled with such happiness and warmth. One day I decided there and then to take my shahada. I walked down to the reception and said I was ready to convert, it was as simple as that….. I grew up Christian and went to a Catholic school. Islam to me seemed to be a natural extension of Christianity. The Qur'an is filled with information about Jesus, Mary, the angels and the Torah. It's part of a natural transition.”

Paul Martin was just a student when he decided to embrace Islam. He says: "I liked the way the Muslims students I knew conducted themselves. It's nice to think about people having one partner for life and not doing anything harmful to their body. I just preferred the Islamic lifestyle and from there I looked into the Qur'an. I was amazed to see Islam's big emphasis on science.”

"Then I was introduced by a Muslim friend to a doctor who was a few years older than me. We went for a coffee and then a few weeks later for an ice cream. It was there that I said I would like to be a Muslim. I made my shahada right there, in the ice cream shop. I know some people like to be all formal and do it in a mosque, but for me religion is not a physical thing, it is what is in your heart.”

Stuart Mee is a 46-year-old civil servant, who embraced Islam in 2010. He says: "Everything is so consumer-driven here, there are always adverts pushing you to buy the next thing. I knew there must be something longer term and always admired the sense of contentment within my colleagues' lives, their sense of peace and calmness. It was just one of those things that happened - we talked, I read books and I related to it. I emailed the Imam at London Central Mosque and effectively had a 15 minute interview with him. It was about making sure that this was the right thing for me, that I was doing it at the right time. He wanted to make sure I was committed. It is a life changing decision. It is surprisingly easy, the process of converting. You do your shahada, which is the declaration of your faith. You say that in front of two witnesses and then you think, 'What do I do next?' I went to an Islamic bookstore and bought a child's book on how to pray. I followed that because, in Islamic terms, I was basically one month old.

"I went to a local mosque in Reading and expected someone to stop me say, 'Are you a Muslim?' but it didn't happen. It was just automatic acceptance. You can have all the trappings of being a Muslim - the beard and the bits and pieces that go with it, but Islam spreads over such a wide area and people have different styles, clothes and approaches to life.”

(Source: www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-islamification-of-britain-record-numbers)

A new study commissioned by Germany’s Interior Ministry has revealed that the population of Muslims in the country is between 3.8 and 4.3 million, or about 5% of Germany’s population.

Of late there has come about a resurgence of sentiments and outbursts against Islam and Muslims in Germany. The context is provided by the growing popular resentment against immigration and the increasing visibility of Germany’s 4 million Muslims. According to a recent survey conducted for the tabloid Bid, nearly 66% of Germans believe that Islam does not belong to Germany. The rising public resentment and anger against immigration can be gauged from the popularity of a recently published book Deutschland schafft sich ab (Germany Does Away with Itself) by Thilo Sarrazin, a German economist who was until recently on the board of Germany’s Bundesbank. In his controversial book, which has sold more than a million copies since its publication in August 2010, Sarrazin says that German women are having far too few babies, while Muslims and other immigrant minorities are producing too many. The result, according to him, is that Germany’s population is shrinking and is getting dumber. Sarrazin has been thoroughly denounced by Germany’s political establishment and Chancellor Angela Merkel accused him of “dividing society”. The Bundesbank has sacked him. However, Sarrazin’s book remains on the best seller list. A study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in October 2010 found that more than 30 per cent people questioned agreed that Germany was “overrun by foreigners.”

In March 2011, Germany’s interior minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said that Islam does not belong in Germany. The foreign minister Guido Westerwelle recently declared that children of immigrants should learn German before learning the language of their parents and grandparents. Wolfgang Schauble, Germany’s finance minister, has recently said it had been a mistake to bring so many Gasterbeiter (guest workers) from Turkey during the economic boom of the 1960s. He said when Turkish workers were invited to work in German factories a half century ago, it was believed that their children would integrate into German society automatically, but this did not happen.

A new study, carried out in five European countries by the University of Munster in Germany, revealed that Germans agitate against new mosques and minarets much more than the French, the Dutch, the Danes and the Portuguese. “They are also less willing to concede equal rights to other religions,” said Professor Detlef Pollack, director of the study. “Compared to other Europeans, their image of Hindus, Buddhists and Jews is more negative.” According to the study, while 62% of the Dutch, 56% of the French and 55% of the Danes have a generally positive perception of Muslims, the majority of Germans (66% in the West and 74% in the East) have a negative image of Muslims.

The study, based on interviews with 10,000 people each in East and West Germany, France, Denmark, the Netherlands and Portugal, noted that the frequency of contact or interaction with Muslims (and other religious groups) in the country has a highly significant bearing on the overall perception of Muslims. “The more often you meet Muslims, the more you view them as generally positive,” Pollack said. Contact between Germans and Muslims in the eastern part of the country was found to be as low as 16%, while it was 40% in the western part. Some three-quarters of West Germans and two-thirds of East Germans reported that that their encounters with Muslims were pleasant. According to the survey, only 49% of respondents in West Germany and 53% in East Germany think that all religious groups should have equal rights--in contrast with 72% in Denmark, 82% in the Netherlands, 86% in France and 89% in Portugal. In West Germany, more than 70% and in the East more than 80% of respondents were opposed to the building of new mosques.

Pollack says that the prevalence of the generally negative perception of Muslims in Germany is due to four factors: the infrequency of contact and interaction between ethnic Germans and Muslims; the lack of a serious and honest about Muslims and about integration in Germany; the growing strength of far-right political parties; certain events at the turn of the century, including the cartoon controversy in Denmark, violence and vandalism by French youth of North African origin in 2005, the headscarf ban in France, and the murder of the Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh.