At semiannual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Istanbul last month, talk was largely dominated, inevitably, by the economic crisis and its aftermath. Islamic finance postgraduate programs and courses have been slower to take off in the United States and Canada. An oft-cited reason is a scarcity of faculty who have the background and training that would qualify them to teach such programs.

As Best Buy recently discovered, reaching out to Muslims can cause a backlash. Even those who champion the targeting of ads to the community steer corporations away from the mainstream media.Mohammed Abdullah, event coordinator for the first American Muslim Consumer Conference, believes the Best Buy ad campaign will spur more outreach. During Ramadan, Western Union.

The agency has identified the great potential the world's 1.4 billion-strong Muslim population holds for marketers across all areas, ranging from food and banking to Halal cosmetics, and believes marketers need to reach out to this marginalised community in a more committed and consistent manner. The key lies "in showing respect to the Muslim world and giving them products that speak to their values"

Nicholas Kaiser got into Islamic investing by accident, but there's nothing haphazard about his Amana funds. Amana's success appears to result from both the discipline of Islamic-based investing and Kaiser's creativity. Nicholas Kaiser isn't the sort of guy you'd expect to sit atop the world's largest group of mutual funds run in accordance with Islamic investing principles.