Who Owns The Oil?

Do oil and Islam mix? Several prominent Iraqi exiles have tentatively endorsed a plan from the U.S. designed to give Iraq's vast oil reserves to "the Iraqi people." The plan defines oil as a government asset, but recommends sharing production with foreign oil companies in exchange for development costs. Now many scholars of Islamic law (Shari'a) say the U.S. plan inadvertently (or perhaps cunningly) delivers a more "Islamic" arrangement than the one followed in supposedly Islamic Saudi Arabia.

Where the U.S. plan intends to give ownership to a democratically elected government, the Saudi royal family collects...