The French legal framework for Islamic credit operations.

Summary The development of Islamic finance has attracted the attention not only of bankers and lawyers, but also of the French public authorities in recent years. This finance, which obeys Islamic law, operates not on the stipulation of interest, but on two other modes of remuneration of the lenders: it applies, on the one hand, the principle of profit and loss sharing by basing transactions on company contracts, and on the other hand, on a profit margin when the operation is based on a sale and lease contract.Among Islamic banking products, Islamic credits are the most characteristic which exclude the stipulation of ribâ (interest). The determination of their French legal regime is dependent on two bodies of law, a priori, opposed. Although they have neither legal foundations, nor clear and precise legal regimes in French law, the latter manages to frame them. This framework presents not only points of convergence, but also points of divergence with Muslim law. The flexibility of these legal systems has led us to define both a general legal framework to define the French regimes for the remuneration of the Islamic credit provider, and a special legal framework to govern the structuring of transactions backed by contracts of sale (such as mourabaha, tawarruq, salam and istisna), lease (ijara and ijara muntahia biltamlik) and partnership (such as mudaraba, mousharaka and degressive mousharaka)