Articles on Islamic Finance
A key maxim of Islamic jurisprudence suggests that in the matter of commercial transactions, everything is deemed permissible unless explicitly stated otherwise. As long as the transacting parties adhere to the principles of Islamic jurisprudence while applying the benchmark to their transaction, it is acceptable to utilize a consensus methodology. In place of risk free rate or base rate of expected return on investment, some thinkers in Islamic finance suggest the possible use of Zakat rate.
From the Islamic finance industry perspective, an important criterion for the industry wide adoption of any benchmark, particularly one that is published every business day, is the simplicity, reliability and robustness of its methodology.
Growth rate of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is one of the most frequently suggested alternative for Islamic finance transactions. GDP measures value of production in a given year. This alternative avoids reference to interest based benchmarks and reflects pure economic activities in a comprehensive way covering output of all sectors plus prices.
The monetary policy until today is conducted without paying any heed to the socioeconomic consequences. Despite the fact that central banks usually have very strong research wings and they are equipped with lots of resources, it is rare to find a study administered by central banks and relating the monetary policy to the socioeconomic indicators except for employment and growth.
In lease based contracts, such as Ijarah and Diminishing Musharakah, the rental indices can capture the true essence of pricing as per the nature of transaction.Â
Repo transactions are not compliant with Islamic principles due to the buyback nature of transaction plus the use of interest based securities as underlying assets. However, in commercial contracts where Islamic banks would like to earn return, there is need for a pricing benchmark to mitigate risk as well as ensure transparency in the contract.
Islamic banking is growing very fast, especially after the global financial crisis in 2008. There is need for more awareness and regulatory support to promote Islamic banking so as to comply with constitution of Pakistan, which clearly urged for eliminating Riba as soon as possible.
This paper aims to see which modes of financing are majorly employed by Islamic banks while providing finance to the clients. The empirical analysis shows that by and large Islamic banks use risk-shifting contracts. The use of risk-sharing based contracts is quite minimal.
The paper discusses reforms in monetary policy to reorient it towards serving the needs of real economy. It focuses on reforms that can be introduced in the transitional phase since reconceptualising the whole monetary system with a reformed outlook on nature of currency, mode of currency issue, money creation and credit creation would take much longer time and requires greater political will.
This paper discusses the preconditions for the development of a pure form of Islamic finance that is Shari’ah based as well as fulfilling the higher goals of Islamic teachings, i.e. Maqasid-e-Shari’ah.
Islamic Economics Project 