Eric Meyer walked out of a London office two weeks ago, a sheaf of signed fatwas in hand.

Hoping to cash in on the trend in financial products aimed at Muslims, the head of the New Canaan, Conn.-based Meyer Capital Partners started calling Islamic law scholars a year ago. His pitch: hedge funds that Muslims could invest in without violating strict tenets of Islamic law that prohibit financial speculation and the earning of interest.

The fatwas -- or Islamic legal opinions -- contained the blessings of three Islamic scholars, all of whom had reviewed Meyer's proposed fund and deemed it compliant with Shariah, or Islamic law.

Meyer also had formal assurances from a team of King & Spalding lawyers that his plans adhered to secular law in the United States as well. "I was on cloud nine," he says. "The lawyers from King & Spalding really did a yeoman's job of bridging the two worlds."

King & Spalding isn't the only U.S. firm collaborating with Islamic scholars. Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher; Bryan Cave; and Wiley Rein & Fielding are some of the firms getting a piece of the Islamic finance pie. Islamic finance was born in the 1970s, after a swell in oil revenues and the resurgence of fundamentalist Muslim movements. The growth meant potential new legal clients, and so American and London lawyers started specializing in investments and financing structures that satisfy Shariah requirements.

While experts differ over exactly how much investment money Muslims around the world have at their disposal, there's little doubt it's a big number, and growing fast. It has taken time and financial wizardry to get some of that capital into the Western market. And paving the way has been a fleet of lawyers who are as comfortable talking about ijarah, or lease deals that comply with Shariah, as they are parsing conventional Western contracts. ("What Is Shariah?".)

"Ten years ago, there were four or five Western lawyers with a little bit of experience in Islamic law," says Yusuf DeLorenzo, one of the scholars who helped vet Meyer's new Shariah-compliant hedge fund. Now nearly a dozen firms have Islamic finance working groups or lawyers who specialize in the practice area.

"It's become a very, very big business," says DeLorenzo, a Northern Virginia- and London-based consultant who helped set up the first Dow Jones Islamic Markets Index five years ago.

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REDEFINING THE ART OF THE DEAL

Shariah is based on the Quran, the teachings of Muhammad, and the work of Muslim scholars during the first two centuries of Islam. Its principles prohibit Muslims from participating in some of the mainstays of Western business, such as earning or paying interest and engaging in speculation. However, Shariah does permit other forms of investment, such as ijarah wa iqtina (lease purchase financing), mudaraba (trust finance), and musharaka (equity participation).

James Phipps, 38, got interested in Islamic law and culture while serving as an Army interrogator during the first Gulf War. He then spent time in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, studying at the King Faisal Center for Islamic Studies and then working in an outpost of Jones Day. Now an associate in Wiley Rein's international business ventures practice, Phipps helps craft joint venture agreements between Muslim and non-Muslim businesses.

Deals are sometimes canceled when Muslim and secular parties can't reach a compromise. But more often the parties make concessions, according to Phipps. "The Muslims that I know are pretty practical people who want to realize the best return they can on their money and do what needs to be done," he says. And a handful of Shariah jurists who specialize in finance are more than willing to level the path to Western markets for investment-savvy Muslims.

Says DeLorenzo: "As a Shariah scholar, I feel more than anything a consumer advocate. I ensure that the service or product is one that a Muslim investor can use with a clear conscience -- that the returns will be halal."

Phipps worked on, for example, a $300 million-plus transaction for a communications network in the Middle East. The buyer, a country with a largely Muslim population, opted for what's known as a build-own-operate-transfer model. A BOOT is a means of financing large-scale infrastructure development used primarily by governments.

Under this model, private sector investors provide the capital for construction, build, and operate the infrastructure for an agreed period of time and then transfer ownership back to the government. The model is conventional in Western terms, but also works as an Islamic finance tool because it doesn't require the buyer to make or receive an interest payment.

"From the buyer's vantage, BOOT doesn't cause any trouble in terms of Islamic law," Phipps says. "And the deal itself didn't strap the non-Islamic [seller] to doing business itself in the Islamic way."

Shariah compliance in government procurement can present a stumbling block, Phipps says. One such deal fell through because the non-Muslim seller in a large project for a Gulf-state government was not willing to forgo interest on late payments, having already agreed to a discounted selling price. There are ways of addressing late payment, Phipps notes, but they often mean that the Muslim party ultimately pays a higher purchase price.