Socially Responsible Investment and Islamic Finance: a Comparison

Despite both belong to the category of ethical finance, it is often assumed that Islamic finance and Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) are not comparable, mostly merely because they seem to belong to different words. Is it really like this? This paper explores the differences and similarities between the two approaches, from both a qualitative and a quantitative point of view. First, we compare the two strategies using a set of criteria, developed through our literature review. In particular, we aim at finding out if there is a possibility that these two strategies could converge in the future. The second part of our analysis consists of an empirical study of European Islamic and SRI indexes. We want to find out if these two strategies perform different from each other, and if they keep up with conventional investments.