Naiel Iqbal's co-workers couldn’t figure him out. He’d just started at a
Midtown Manhattan hedge fund — the kind of elite enclave where
overachievers in button-downs go to make a few hundred grand before
heading off to Harvard Business School.
But Mr. Iqbal, 27, a graduate of the Wharton
School, wasn’t acting like a typical finance guy. He didn’t introduce
himself around the office. Nor did he grab lunch with the other traders.
In fact, he didn’t eat at all. Or drink. Not coffee, not soda, not even a sip of water from a Nalgene bottle on his desk.
All
day, he just sat there, staring into his Bloomberg terminal. Was he
sick? Nervous? A modern Bartleby? None of the above: It was Ramadan, and
Mr. Iqbal, a Muslim, was exhausted from fasting daily till sundown.
“I’m
actually a huge foodie,” he recalls with a laugh. “When Ramadan ended, I
was, like: ‘Guys, let’s go to this restaurant! Let’s go to that one!’
Nobody had seen that side of me.” Mr. Iqbal — who doesn’t drink or smoke
— is among a growing number of young Muslims who are disrupting Wall
Street’s old-boy culture.
Seen
from a certain angle, the Street can still look like a monolith — a
cohort of white males with Ivy League degrees and Roman numerals
attached to their names. (This is especially true the higher you look;
there are, for example, no black, female or openly gay chief executives
at the nation’s largest banks.) But as the Street adapts to greater
regulation, lower profits and tighter costs, it is also experiencing
change within its ranks.
Among
entry-level financiers, especially, a years-long recruiting effort at
major banks has resulted in a diverse group of aspiring Masters of the
Universe. Young Muslims, one of the newest groups to make inroads in American finance, can face steep barriers to entry.
Some obstacles are remnants of a less tolerant
era. But prominent, too, are the limitations of Islam itself — a faith
whose tenets, Muslim workers say, often seem at odds with Wall Street’s
sometimes bacchanalian culture.
“I’m always the one drinking Diet Coke at happy hour,” Mr. Iqbal said.
Granted,
for the many Muslims in New York and elsewhere who have made peace with
a more secular culture, working on Wall Street may not pose any
problem.
And
Muslims, of course, aren’t the only ones whose values can clash with the
ways of Wall Street. Orthodox Jews, conservative Christians and other
faithful working in finance have all, at one point, had to square their
beliefs and practices with an environment in which money, not God, is
king.
But for
observant Muslims hoping to keep the values and practices of Islamic
law, known as Sharia, intact even as they climb the ladder, the calculus
can be messy.
For Aisha Jukaku, a former health care analyst at Goldman Sachs , getting started in finance carried additional challenges.
Ms.Jukaku
has worn a head scarf, or hijab, since she was 11. Like many
conservative Muslim women, she avoids physical contact with men outside
her family. (She makes exceptions for handshakes extended to her in a
business setting that would be awkward to decline.) “It’s not something I
want to do,” she says of shaking hands with men. “But that’s the common
American way of doing business.”
At
Goldman, where she worked from 2006 to 2008, she developed a daily
routine that let her preserve her religious beliefs while not missing a
beat at work. She would wake before sunrise in her Battery Park City
apartment, conduct her first of five daily prayers, then fall back
asleep until around 8:30 a.m., when she would head to work.
While
at Goldman, she dressed more modestly than most of her colleagues, and
found a room in the firm’s health center where she could pray during the
day. During
Ramadan one year, a staffing director, seeing how tired she looked after
completing a big deal on an empty stomach, took pity on her.
“He
said: ‘Take it easy for the next couple weeks. This can’t be fun for
you,’ ” said Ms. Jukaku, who now works as a freelance financial
consultant. For many Muslims in finance, such delicate negotiations are part of life.
Ali
Akbar, 34, a Pakistan-born managing director at RBC Capital Markets,
says that although he observes the Ramadan fast, he doesn’t always pray
five times a day and doesn’t pray in his office to avoid drawing the
attention of colleagues.
And when the demands of his job collide with the teachings of his faith, a tough choice often follows.
“You can’t just get up in the middle of a deal and say, ‘I have to go spend two hours in a mosque,’ ” Mr. Akbar says.
Working
in finance is straightforward enough in a Muslim country, where prayer
breaks are typical and holidays like Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of
Ramadan, are built into the calendar. But Muslim bankers in the United
States have fewer resources.
Many
don’t have dedicated prayer rooms at work, and leaving the office to
attend Friday prayers at a mosque can mean shuffling duties to a
co-worker.
“We have
a concept called law of necessity,” said Rushdi Siddiqui, global head
of Islamic finance at Thomson Reuters. “You have to, at one level, abide
by the laws of the land that you happen to reside in, whether it’s the
formal laws or the unwritten laws.”
Perhaps
the biggest impediment to greater participation by Muslims on Wall
Street is that, by some readings, the Koran prohibits riba, or interest.
Some
Islamic scholars have interpreted the ban to be more inclusive of
modern finance, and a subgenre of Sharia-compliant financial
transactions, known as sukuk, has tried to bridge the gap. Still, a vast
majority of Wall Street deals are not Sharia-compliant. So observant
Muslims at traditional banks are often forced to shift their boundaries.
“What
I was doing wasn’t 100 percent legitimate in terms of religious
ruling,” Ms. Jukaku says of her work at Goldman. “But after a while, you
stop feeling guilty, I guess.”
In
2006, three Muslim twenty-somethings formed a group to help fellow
young professionals negotiate issues that arise. The organization,
Muslim Urban Professionals, nicknamed “Muppies,” began as a Google group
of around 50; members traded messages about job openings, notices of
apartments for rent and announcements of group dinners.
It
has expanded to about 1,000 members globally, roughly half of whom work
in finance, according to Mr.Iqbal, the hedge fund trader, who is now a
national administrator of the group. As the Muppies’ ranks have grown,
more intimate questions have surfaced.
Earlier
this year, one member, who was about to start a job at a well-known
consulting firm, e-mailed the group for advice. How, he wondered, could
he succeed at his new job without compromising his Muslim values? The
consultant’s plea, under the subject line “Avoiding Alcohol and Opposite
Gender Handshakes in the Corporate World,” received a vast range of
responses.
In
regard to the alcohol issue, Muppies respondents divided into liberal,
moderate and conservative camps — those who suggested that going to bars
with colleagues was permissible, those who thought “drinking-focused
events” were unadvisable but that dinners where alcohol was served were
O.K., and those who insisted that places serving alcohol were to be
avoided.
“The
dominant opinion is that it’s still mustahab (recommended) to get up or
leave a gathering where alcohol is served, but many consider it mubah
(permissible) to stay seated,” the consultant wrote.
On
the matter of handshaking, some urged the consultant to shake hands
with women when prompted, but not to initiate handshakes himself. Others suggested adopting “a tactful technique to avoid” shaking hands, such as pretending to be sick or wearing gloves.
“I
think Muslim professionals are too sensitive and underestimate our
co-workers,” the consultant wrote, summarizing his own views.
“People
in our society are actually quite understanding of these things and we
just freak out, thinking,
‘OMG, what will they all think if I don’t
shake her hand??!!’ Just trust in God and He will guide you and give you
more than that which you give up for him.” The Muppies also draw on a
network of older, more experienced mentors in finance and investing.
One such mentor, Iftikar A. Ahmed, a general
partner at the venture capital firm Oak Investment Partners, says the
Muppies fill an “amazing need” in the community.
“It’s
telling them that you can follow an American way of life while not
denying the fact that you happen to be a Muslim,” Mr. Ahmed said.
Mohamed
A. El-Erian, chief executive of the giant bond house Pimco and one of
the highest-ranking Muslims in American finance, said in an e-mail
interview that he had never experienced “religion-based impediments” in
his decades-long career.
He
said he would advise young Muslims to “seek the opportunities and firms
that speak to their set of values, expertise and passion.” Left unsaid
by senior Muslims, but understood by many Muppies, is that being Muslim
can be an asset for one’s employer and clients.
Muslim bankers, for example, may have to leave work at 1 p.m. on Fridays to go to the mosque.
But
they also may be less likely to rack up a huge bar tab on the company
card and may be better positioned to compete for business in Arab
markets.
“Rightly
or wrongly, if you’re religious, you’re considered to have a reasonable
degree of integrity,” says Sohail Khan, a managing principal at
StormHarbour Securities and former trader at Citigroup.
He
says that his business expenses are often lower than colleagues’ and
that he considers his lifestyle an asset in negotiating deals.
“When
you’re the only guy at the table that’s not drunk, it’s a great
weapon,” he said. “You know more than anyone else at the table the next
morning.”
Mr.Akbar
of RBC agrees that “being a good Muslim helps you be a good banker” but
acknowledges that the union of his religious beliefs and his work in
finance has been less than perfect.
“When
I made a decision to pursue a career on Wall Street, there were certain
things I knew I would have trouble reconciling with my faith,” he says.
“I did some research, and I gained comfort that God is all-forgiving.”
For
some, though, the envelope can be pushed only so far. Farhan Malik, Mr.
Khan’s cousin and former Citigroup colleague, found his faith tested
last year when asked to work on a trade involving British pubs.
Mr. Malik, who does not drink, decided that
trading so-called pub securities would violate tenets of his faith. He
asked to be taken off the assignment; his bosses gladly acquiesced.
For
Mr. Malik, who has since left Citigroup and now works at a Bahrain bank
that deals sukuk products in addition to more conventional ones, the
notion of marrying Western bank culture with Islam’s demands came to
feel like an uphill battle.
“If
you’re going to go out for Friday prayers, if you’re not drinking, it’s
like trying to box with one of your hands tied behind your back,” he
said.
Still, for the Muppies and other Muslims hoping to make it on Wall Street, the fight carries on. The goal, they say, is to be so good at their jobs that bosses and colleagues come to think of each as just another hard worker.
“Wall Street is basically blind to religion,” said Mr. Siddiqui at Thomson Reuters.
“What
it’s concerned about is deal flow, assets under management and
transactions.” Mr. Malik, the former Citigroup trader, said it another
way:
“You could be worshiping Satan. As long as you’re making money,
they’re happy.”
