Abstract

Islamic Banking is any banking activity performed on the basis of Islamic laws of jurisprudence. The two fundamental sources of Islamic law are the Quran, (which is the Holy Book of Muslims) and the Sunnah, (which are the Traditions of the final Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be upon Him)). Islamic methods of finance revolve around a few basic concepts, the most important of which is the prohibition of ‘Riba’ or interest. Although this concept is relatively new in the Indian context, the Islamic financial world is now a global force to reckon with and India might miss out if the opportunity is not capitalized. It is worth mentioning that the total value of Islamic business stands at $6.7 trillion and is growing at a rate of 16-20% a year. Also, the fact that many non-Muslim countries like UK have opened full-fledged Islamic banks point to the fact that Islamic finance or Islamic banking is not limited to Muslims alone. Therefore, India’s ambitions of becoming an Asian financial hub cannot be met without capitalizing into the pool of Islamic Finance. The purpose of this paper is to study the level of awareness of students of private universities in Chennai and to study the cross cultural patronage factors towards Islamic Banking. The findings reveal that the respondents have a positive and favorable patronage towards Islamic Banking due to their perception about its success in other parts of the world.

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