By Mufti Ismail Ebrahim Desai
Abstract
Islamic finance has achieved considerable growth and considered to be the fastest growing segment of the financial system. The main jurisdictions in the GCC and Malaysia have experienced notable growth. However other jurisdictions in Africa such as South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and Ivory Coast and in Asia, such as Singapore and Indonesia and in Europe, such as Luxembourg, United Kingdom and Germany have also seen considerable growth in the sector. There however remain various challenges such as lack of human capital, Shari’ah standardization and harmonization, public awareness, regulation and supervision, access to finance, liquidity management and others. Various solutions have been provided in this paper including adoption of Shari’ah law standards across jurisdictions, creating mass awareness programmes by governments and banks, amendments to tax policies to level the playing field, creation of Islamic financial benchmark and Shari’ah harmonization with existing legal and policy frameworks.
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