Originally written by Timothy Adler on Small Business
Qardus, the first small business Islamic finance platform in the UK, hopes to arrange up to £2.5m worth of funding over the coming year.
The crowdfunding platform, which launched last July, offers sharia-compliant Islamic finance to any small business, whether it is Muslim-owned or not.
Muslim-owned SMEs are an underserved market in Britain, as they are forbidden to borrow money or pay interest under Sharia law yet still need to grow.
>See also: Sharia start-up funding boom as UK leads in Islamic finance
An estimated 3.3m Muslims live in Britain, many of whom need to grow their small businesses but are prohibited under Sharia from borrowing from high street banks. (The word “Sharia” means a well-trodden pathway to water, although in this case it means religious legislation.)
So far, Qardus has arranged nearly £320,000 worth of Islamic finance for five small business owners, including a property firm, a chemist and a dental practice.
Firms can arrange anything between £25,000 and £200,000, which they repay over up to 36 months.
Around 750 individual investors have signed up for the Qardus crowdfunding platform.
Just as Muslim-owned microbusinesses do not really have anywhere to turn for Sharia-compliant finance – most of the big Islamic