Contemporary Challenges Confronting Islamic Banking & Finance

Abstract

The philosophy of Islamic economics is “brining economics in consonance with Shariah”, guiding Islamic banking and finance to abolish interest from operations, has reported a monumental growth, envisaged the most lucrative and unsusceptible segment of the economy. Islamic finance is undoubtedly flourishing worldwide entails trajectory development but at other front it encounters a number of impediments in development since its inception. The emphasis of this study is to encapsulate in tabular form, the contemporary problems and challenges Islamic finance has encountered during the span of last 28-years from 1988 to 2015. The austere Shariah compliance; regulatory and prudential challenges; misconception among western society about Islamic banking philosophy; unavailability of money and capital market for scant Islamic financial instruments; piercing competition; privation of Islamic banking and finance awareness; absence of uniform reporting standards; complexities of regulatory and supervisory issues; lack of central supervisory body, governance and dearth of consensus among Shariah scholars been the precarious challenges among many others. A unified central regulatory and supervisory mechanism required in converging sprinkled Islamic finance practices and to foster a synchronized and standardized regulatory framework consensus need to be developed among all Shariah scholars