The 2025 Islamic Finance Development Indicator (IFDI) assessed 140 countries, with the global average score declining to 11 due to new entrants scoring low in most indicators. The top 10 countries remained unchanged, led by Malaysia and the UAE, which excelled across all five indicators. Notable shifts include Bangladesh dropping out of the top 10 due to Islamic banking sector challenges, while Tanzania showed promise with Sukuk issuance and sector growth.
Halal ESG shaped by Tawhidic epistemology is not merely an alternative model; it is a civilizational intervention—calling for harmony between the sacred and the temporal, between environmental responsibility and metaphysical awareness, between economic development and divine accountability. It is this synthesis—rooted in Tawhid, driven by Ummatic consciousness, and aspiring toward Ummatic excellence—that will enable halal industries to become ethical vanguards in a fractured world.
Using a contract-theoretic model, Khan compares two financial arrangements: the Fixed Return Scheme (FRS), which mirrors conventional debt, and the Variable Return Scheme (VRS), which represents profit-and-loss sharing (PLS) contracts such as Mudarabah or Musharakah. His analysis assumes a single lender allocating a fixed pool of funds across many independent projects, with symmetric information and costless observability.
The earlier scholars provided application of Islamic juristic principles to derive and apply the Islamic teachings related to commerce, entrepreneurship and consumption. Muslim scholarship initially focused on public finance and its administration to deal with the practical problems of the newly formed state which expanded rapidly and required sound legal and administrative framework to legislate economic activities centred around agriculture and trade.
In Islamic jurisprudence, money (mal) serves primarily as a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account. Classical jurists such as al-Ghazālī and Ibn Taymīyah stressed that money must not be used for speculative ends or to generate guaranteed returns (riba), nor should it expose transacting parties to undue uncertainty (gharar) or resemble gambling (maysir). Extending these timeless principles into the digital age, a Shariah-compliant CBDC must preserve the objectives of Islamic law (Maqāṣid al-Sharīʿah) by fostering economic justice, preventing harm, and promoting communal welfare.
Clarity on issue of Riba is so important in Shari’ah that while recognizing change in value due to change in quality, it does not force us to exchange different qualities in equal quantity and yet in case of Amwale Ribuwiah, it does not allow these to be directly exchanged with any excess of weight (quantity) on either side. As generally understood by our scholars, this restriction was essential to stop practice of Riba by hiding behind difference in quality.
He wrote extensively on Islamic microeconomics giving the Islamic perspective to the theory of consumer and producer behaviour. He would go beyond philosophical debates and narratives to also discuss the operationalization of the analysis of consumer and producer behaviour. He wrote several books, book chapters and research papers on Economics, Microeconomics, Development Economics, Essays on the issues in Islamic Economics and Islamic Banking.
Total IFSI assets reached USD 3.88 trillion, marking a significant 14.9% year-on-year (YoY) growth compared to 2023. This acceleration in asset growth outpaced the average rates of recent years. The growth momentum reflected accommodative global financial conditions in 2024 driven by lower interest rate expectations and easing inflation, which revived market sentiment and capital flows, alongside sustained demand for Islamic financial services, and increased market participation across key Islamic finance jurisdictions.
Islamic Economics Project 