In Islamic law (Sharia), you cannot pay a fixed rate of interest, called “Riba”, in return for capital. Indeed, money must not “work” alone but nothing in Sharia prohibits the remuneration of assets purchased using loaned capital. The inner principle of the many prohibitions against money lending in Islamic law is that money has no intrinsic value in itself, only human labor should be rewarded. Islamic financial contracts are designed to facilitate financing according to Islamic standards. Islamic finance emerged in the early 1960s with the aim of developing alternative financial contracts compliant with Sharia law. Before Islamic finance existed in the 1960s, it could not develop without a strong institution. The establishment of the first Islamic social bank, the Mit Ghamr Islamic Bank in Egypt in 1963, and the first Islamic commercial bank, the Dubai Islamic Bank in 1975, posed this problem. This financing system remained relatively unknown until a few years ago, when the risks taken in classic global finance led to a global crisis. In a first part we will study why Islamic finance is really different from classical finance, then why it could be an alternative to classical finance, and finally we will see that this financing model is not a panacea for all the problems of our current financing system. I) How is Islamic finance so different from current global finance? Sociologists agree that the process of modernization of society is due to the separation of the different spheres (economic, artistic, legal, etc.) from religion. This process called secularization is the foundation of our society: "saeculum" in Latin means "century" and what I...... middle of paper ...... finance will not overcome the current model but will only be a part of it. Indeed, traditional finance has a great propensity to consider alternative models as a niche market. Islamic finance is still young, and much experimentation and research will be needed before it can play a significant role in global finance. The risk is that Islamic Finance loses part of its ethical principles as it develops. Indeed, even if gambling is theoretically prohibited by Sharia, we can always construct a system circumventing the rule, as is effectively the case with the Salam contract: a short-term contract authorized by Sharia, where the seller realizes a profit on a drop in value of the property. Works Cited: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from respect for their own interest..