Preface: Handbook of Research on Theory and Practice of Global Islamic Finance

Abstract

The editing of a handbook of research on Global Islamic Finance is more exciting and challenging than ever before. The past three decades have been an eventful one for the proponents of Islamic finance. Islamic Finance has become a buzzword from G20 to World Economic Forum to global and national economic agendas. Today Islamic Finance is being considered as a key driver of alternate financing in Muslim and non-Muslims countries alike. It has enabled the birth of new financial products based on Shari’ah principles.

During the primitive years of Islam, the savings and investments were based on participation and due to the availability of finance on profit and loss basis, there was no interest in the international trade of Muslim countries (Siddiqi, 1983; El-Gammal, 2000; Chapra & Khan, 2000). However, the situation had changed in the early fifteenth century when interest started replacing profit and loss sharing, slowly and steadily. After the revival of Islamic financial system in 20th century (El-Ashker, 1987), during last three decades, a number of Shari’ah compliant products and services are being introduced around the globe and are being offered in the areas of general banking, consumer banking, investment banking, trade finance and SME Financing. The underlying Islamic mode of these products and services are Mudarabah, Diminishing Musharakah, Murabaha, Salam, Istisna, Ijarah, Qard Hasna, Agency and Sale, and others.

This volume is organized into eleven sections that consist of 44 chapters by writers from 26 countries. 79 Authors contributed from disparate parts of the world; USA(2), Mauritius(1), UK(1), Nigeria(4), Singapore(1), Uzbekistan(1), Korea(1), Sri Lanka(2), France(1), Brunei(1), Netherlands(1), Malaysia(36), Japan(1), Tunisia(2), Australia(3), Luxembourg(2), Palestine(1), Turkey(2), Saudi Arabia(2), Bangladesh(2), India(2), Indonesia(3), Pakistan(4), Oman(1), Qatar(1) and Sudan(1).

Keywords: Islamic Finance