ARTICLE: "When Hedge Funds Meet Islamic Finance: U.S. Firms Hire Scholars To Help Design Products," by Joanna Slater, Wall Street Journal, 9 August 2007, p. A1.

All of this dialogue is based on the Koran disallowing interest, reflecting the pre-economic logic of the source (and by that, I mean, disallowing credit back then wasn't the great limit on economic development that it is now).

Now, it's all back and forth with Islamic scholars to see how far you can bend that rule while still meeting it in spirit, which gets the process at least into the last century and starts accelerating it toward this one.

Yes, it is a contentious dialogue, with risks on both sides, but it's the best type of dialogue, beating any strategic comms or public diplomacy by a ways.