Infochoice on MCCA:
The withdrawal of GE Money from the Australian mortgage market will adversely effect the market for Islamic or sharia-compliant home loans. The largest provider of sharia compliant finance in Australia, the Muslim Community Co-Operative Australia provides home loans under the S2L label. These loans are ordinary home loans financed by GE Money Australia, but subject to a series of contracts between the borrower and the MCCA that deem them sharia compliant in the eyes of the MCCA’s religious advisers.
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So what makes them halal? That MCCA gives the borrower a piece of paper saying they are halal? MCCA isn’t part of the contract between borrower and GE Capital and they don’t even have any influence over the “profit rate” that gets charged to the customer.
The piece of paper is the one that makes it halal, where marriage and spouse relationship are the same in outcome but the piece of paper is the one that makes it halal.
MCCA is acting as a mortgage manager (Al Wakeel) for the Funder, if MCCA not been able to influence the profit rate, it does not make the product not halal.
MCCA has another funder to give another Shariah Compliant finance (Ijarah Montahiah Betamleek).
Nikah is more than just a piece of paper …
In marriage the piece of paper is only needed for civil matters (ie. gov records) but doesn’t mean anything at all
I don’t think there is any issue with MCCA as an organisation but I think a lot of Muslims were surprised by the GE link.
Most of us don’t know anything about Islamic finance so it would be good if there was more information on the MCCA website including some reviews by independent scholars or examples where this product has been implemented before and given the stamp of approval from these scholars.
On the face of it it seems a bit dodgy because people think they are getting into a relationship with MCCA (who we all trust and know) but they somehow end up in a relationship with GE.
On an tangential note- you folks might find this interesting:
http://business.smh.com.au/bus.....-6tli.html
I found the lack of transparency troubling with the GE scenario, there might be an option to add customer reviews about Halal financial product through this site:
http://mozo.com.au/home-loans
If you can get more information out there about what is available to the Muslim community the better of everyone will be.
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