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ETHICA’S HANDBOOK OF ISLAMIC FINANCE
             2013 EDITION
         www.EthicaInstitute.com




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                                              © 2013

                                            Published by

                                Ethica Institute of Islamic Finance
                                 1401, Boulevard Plaza, Tower 1
                               Emaar Boulevard, Downtown Dubai
                           P O Box 127150, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

                                     www.EthicaInstitute.com
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Cover photo: Copyright © Sohail Nakhooda




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Ethica’s Handbook of Islamic Finance is a free book designed for
you. Everyone is welcome to copy, forward, store, or share all or part
of this book for non-commercial use.

We only ask that the words be left as they are and that the source be
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Click here to receive regular updates and the 2014 edition of Ethica’s
Handbook of Islamic Finance.




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Corruption has appeared in the land and sea, for that
men's own hands have earned, that He may let them
 taste some part of that which they have done, that
               haply they may return.
                           Quran (30:41)




 "All that we had borrowed up to 1985 or 1986 was around $5
 billion and we have paid about $16 billion yet we are still being
told that we owe about $28 billion. That $28 billion came about
because of the injustice in the foreign creditors' interest rates. If
  you ask me what is the worst thing in the world, I will say it is
                      compound interest."
      President Obasanjo of Nigeria, G8 summit, Okinawa, 2000




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TABLE OF CONTENTS
We Believe...                                                                                        6

Speech                                                                                               8
Use this speech or the accompanying video at your conference, training session, bank or
university.

Petitions                                                                                            19
Use these sample petitions to bring standardized Islamic finance into your community.

Articles                                                                                             24
Use these articles to inform yourself and others about the basics of Islamic finance.

Meezan Bank's Guide to Islamic Banking by Dr. Imran Usmani                                           63
Use this section for a more detailed understanding of the industry’s core products from one of
its leading scholars.

Islamic Finance Contracts                                                                            192
Use these sample contracts to educate yourself and your bank about Islamic finance
instruments.

CIFE™ Study Notes                                                                                    298
Use these study notes to help you prepare for Ethica’s Certified Islamic Finance Executive™
(CIFE™) program.

Recommended Reading for Practitioners                                                                351
Use this reading list to help develop your worldview on finance.

Recommended Reading for Entrepreneurs                                                                358
Use this reading list to help you jump start your Islamic finance idea.

Islamic Finance Questions and Answers                                                                362
Use this database of 1,000+ scholar-approved answers to guide your commercial dealings.

Glossary of Commonly Used Terminology                                                                643
Use this section to understand the industry’s most commonly used terminology.

About Ethica Institute of Islamic Finance                                                            667

About the Certified Islamic Finance Executive™ (CIFE™)                                                670

Press Releases                                                                                       676

Subject Index                                                                                        679
Use this detailed index to quickly search the entire e-book.

Contact Ethica                                                                                       700




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WE BELIEVE...
We believe that interest is the root cause of most of the world’s problems.

If we did not have compound interest, we would not need compound growth. And if we did not
need compound growth, we would not have most of the debt-induced poverty, resource-hungry
wars, and runaway climate change we now see. All interest – whether simple interest or compound
interest, whether at very low rates or very high rates – grows so fast that we simply cannot keep up.

Need an example? Brazil is home to the beautiful Amazon rainforest. This lush wonder supplies us
with a quarter of the world’s oxygen. That’s one in every four breaths. Unfortunately, this forest will
vanish in our lifetimes. Why? So Brazil can pay off $200 billion of debt. How? With lumber.

Or take an example closer to home. Are you or someone you know crushed under growing personal
debt?

We believe there is a connection between interest and many of the world’s problems. And we
believe that Islamic finance can help solve some of these problems.

But for this to happen we need two things: the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. For the letter
of the law to work, Islamic finance needs to follow some basic minimum standards. Standards that
won’t be taken seriously unless central banks start pulling some licenses.

The best standard in the industry – de facto in over 90% of the world’s Islamic finance jurisdictions –
is AAOIFI (pronounced “a-yo-fee”), which stands for the Accounting and Auditing Organization for
Islamic Financial Institutions. AAOIFI brings together scholars from all over the world who agree on
Shariah standards. If it isn’t AAOIFI-compliant, it probably isn’t Shariah-compliant. We believe that
following AAOIFI Shariah Standards – and questioning whether your bank, scholar, or trainer is
following them – is a good starting point for following the letter of the law.

But we can’t stop there. Islamic finance needs to follow the spirit of the law as well.

We need to promote equity-based structures like Musharakah and Mudarabah and reduce our
dependence on expedient structures like Murabaha. We need to eliminate Tawarruq. And at a
broader level, we need to address the larger problem of fractional debt-reserve banking. Why do
banks get to lend money they don’t have? And make money on money that doesn’t exist? Does this
make sense?

While the reality is that banks aren’t going away anytime soon, a first step to challenging fractional
debt-reserve banking is establishing a globally recognized gold-based currency. This immediately
forces the market to tie transactions to assets rather than base them on mere numbers inside
computers.

So where do we start with promoting the law in letter and spirit?

We believe it starts with you and me.


                                                Manifesto                                        6
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If you’re a banker, you can start doing two things at your bank: 1) check that your bank’s products
comply with AAOIFI. The latest standards are available at www.aaoifi.com; and 2) start switching to
Musharakah and Mudarabah for a variety of activities ranging from liquidity management to trade
finance. And if your bank doesn’t offer Islamic finance, start asking why.

If you’re a regulator and Islamic finance is already practiced in your jurisdiction, pressure banks to
follow AAOIFI or risk having their licenses suspended. At a broader level, support the Islamic
microfinance industry. If Islamic finance hasn’t yet reached your jurisdiction, promote awareness
with training and educational initiatives.

If you’re an entrepreneur, you probably have a skill the Islamic finance industry could use. Dream
big: create a company, a community-based institution, a local currency, an ecologically-minded
village, or an innovative product. In most countries, people still lack interest-free alternatives to
home, education, and healthcare financing. Why is it easier to issue a billion dollar Sukuk than it is
to raise a single penny for a Shariah-compliant education financing? How can we better
operationalize Zakah? How do we build Waqf-based community-owned trust models? The
recommended reading list for entrepreneurs later in this book gets you started with your idea.

And if you’re a student, learn Islamic finance. Think beyond the standard career path and seriously
consider starting something on your own. Do what you love and success will follow.

We believe this century – indeed, the coming years – will be like nothing before. Global heating will
mean less food and water. Peak oil will mean less energy. And repeated financial crises will mean
less certainty. We can throw our hands up and walk away in resignation. Or we can identify the root
problems and do something about it. God only makes us responsible for our actions. He takes care
of outcomes.

We believe that it’s time to openly question the interest-based paradigm and promote interest-free
finance as the proven alternative. But the first step to questioning a paradigm and offering an
alternative is to educate yourself. Only then will you believe. And that’s what this book is all about:
conviction. Because if you believe, then so will everyone else.




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SPEECH




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SPEECH:
WHY ISLAMIC FINANCE?
You are free to read all or part of this speech or play the video at conferences, training sessions,
banks and universities.

What do President Obasanjo of Nigeria, Nick the UK
homebuyer, and Faisal the American college student all
have in common? They’re all trying to pay off loans that
seem to increase every single day. What started off with
a seemingly small interest rate ballooned into
something completely unattainable. We’ll look at each
of their examples a little later.

First, let’s answer the big question on everyone’s mind:
How is Islamic finance different from conventional
                                                                       PLAY NOW
finance? It looks the same. The result is often the same. What’s the difference?

Well, the best way to find out is with a simple, real-world comparison. Let’s take $10,000, for
instance. And let's compare what a conventional bank can do with this $10,000 and what an
Islamic bank can do.

First, the conventional bank.

The conventional bank finds a credit worthy customer and lends at 5% interest. The bank is not
particularly concerned about what happens to this money other than that it gets repaid. The
customer, on the other hand, has already found a borrower willing to pay 7%. This borrower runs a
small credit co-op for students and lends at 10%. One of these students is enterprising enough to
lend to his unemployed brother at 15%. Who has just discovered the power of compounding
interest and now lends to street vendors at 25%. We could go on. But you get the idea.

As we speak, there are poor people paying upwards of 40%...per month! Now obviously we can’t
blame conventional banks for everything that happens after they’ve made the initial loan. But we
can blame the power of compounded interest.”

Interest, and the fact that you don’t need actual cash to lend money means that the original $10,000
could keep passing hands until we pump out over $100,000 of artificial wealth. Artificial is right.
How much actual cash is there? Only $10,000. With interest, we managed to turn $10,000 into
much more.




                                      Speech: Why Islamic Finance?                          9
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Now what happens if the street vendors go out of business? Or the unemployed brother doesn’t find
his job? Or the credit co-op goes bankrupt?

That’s right. Loans don’t get repaid. And if enough people can’t repay their loans, lenders get into all
sorts of trouble. This vicious cycle sets off a domino effect of defaults.

And imagine that instead of a $10,000 personal loan, it’s a million dollar business loan, or a billion
dollar World Bank loan. Compounding interest grows so fast that borrowers are often unable to
repay. People, economies, and the environment pay the price as we grow more desperate to meet
rising debts.

So are we surprised when billions of dollars vanish into thin air?

Let’s take the example of the Islamic bank. With this $10,000 the Islamic bank only invests in actual
assets and services. It might buy machinery, lease out a car, or invest in a small business. But,
throughout, the transaction is always tied to a real asset or service.

And this is the central point: we can’t simply “compound” assets and services like we can
compound interest-based loans. An asset or service can only have one buyer and one seller at any
given time. Interest, on the other hand, allows cash to circulate and grow into enormous sums.

That’s the difference between Islamic finance and conventional finance: the difference between
buying and selling something real and borrowing and lending something fleeting.

In recent years we’ve witnessed the most dramatic global financial downturn seen in decades. What
began as a housing bubble soon became a sub-prime credit crisis. And what many thought would
remain a credit crisis soon spread into a global financial meltdown. It devastated every corner of the
world.

And while these events affected most of us negatively, there was one silver lining: people finally
gave a serious look at alternative forms of finance. And many people stopped believing that interest
could solve all problems.

Understanding what caused these events serves as our starting point for understanding Islamic
finance, and how it differs from conventional finance.

What conventional finance enables is the ability to sell money when there is no money. To sell assets
before there are any underlying assets. And to allow debts to grow unchecked while borrowers
become more desperate.

Interest creates an artificial money supply that isn’t backed by real assets. The result? Increased
inflation, heightened volatility, richer rich, and poorer poor.

Let’s look at 3 practical examples that show just how Islamic finance is different from, and better
than, conventional finance. And while Islamic finance parts ways with conventional finance on
more than just being interest-free, we’ll focus on interest in this talk.



                                      Speech: Why Islamic Finance?                             10
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We’ll look at 3 people in 3 very different, real-world situations: the first is the leader of a developing
country: President Obasanjo of Nigeria; the second is Nick, a homebuyer in the UK, and the third is
Faisal, an American college student.

Debt-Laden Country: Nigeria

We begin by quoting President Obasanjo who said these words
after the G8 summit in Okinawa in 2000: "All that we had
borrowed up to 1985 or 1986 was around $5 billion and we have
paid about $16 billion yet we are still being told that we owe
about $28 billion. That $28 billion came about because of the
injustice in the foreign creditors' interest rates. If you ask me what
is the worst thing in the world, I will say it is compound interest."

It seems unbelievable but, sadly, it’s typical. Developing countries
start off with relatively small loans and remain saddled with huge
amounts of growing debt for generations. And remember, this could be Nigeria, or any other poor
country. To give just one other example, during the years leading up to the 1997 Asian collapse,
Indonesia’s foreign debt as a percentage of GDP was over 60%. So Nigeria is certainly not an
isolated example. There are countless more.

How did borrowing just $5 billion end up in having to pay $44 billion in total? Let's open up a
spreadsheet and find out. For the sake of simplicity we’ll just grow $5 billion into $44 billion
between 1985 and 2000 and see what interest rate we get. It must've been a very high interest rate
to get to $44 billion in such a short period of time. So let’s start off with 40% per annum. No that's
not right.

Table 1: $5 billion growing at 40%


               Year                                 Debt

               1985                            5,000,000,000

               1986                            7,000,000,000

               1987                            9,800,000,000

                 -                                    -

               1997                           283,469,561,876

               1998                           396,857,386,627

               1999                           555,600,341,278

               2000                           777,840,477,789




                                       Speech: Why Islamic Finance?                             11
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Let's try 30%. That still gives us a very high number.

Table 2: $5 billion growing at 30%


               Year                                Debt

               1985                           5,000,000,000

               1986                           6,500,000,000

               1987                           8,450,000,000

               1988                           10,985,000,000

                 -                                   -

               1997                          116,490,425,612

               1998                          151,437,553,296

               1999                          196,868,819,285

               2000                          255,929,465,070


It turns out that to grow $5 billion into $44 billion takes an interest rate of only 15.6%. Now on the
face of it around 15% doesn't sound exorbitant. It doesn't seem unfair, and technically it isn't even
illegal according to international law. In fact, we personally know of banks that charge high-risk
credits upwards of 30% interest rates. But every day numerous countries find themselves in the same
predicament as Nigeria.

UNICEF estimates that over half a million children under the age of five die each year around the
world as a result of the debt crisis. But as we’ve seen, it’s not the debt that’s the problem. It’s the
compounding interest.

Now how would Islamic finance handle things differently?

Using the $5 billion example, Islamic banks could provide $5 billion of financing for infrastructure,
literacy, healthcare, or sanitation programs, to name a few.

   •   An Islamic bank could have arranged for the $4 billion construction of a natural gas pipeline
       and delivered it to Nigeria for $5 billion using an Istisna.

   •   Or taken an equity stake in a highway project and shared in profits and losses using
       Musharakah or Mudarabah.

   •   Or purchased commodities and sold them at a premium using a Murabaha.

   •   Or structured a project financing using an Ijarah Sukuk.



                                      Speech: Why Islamic Finance?                            12
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These names may sound new to you, but as we explain them in our training modules, they’re much
like conventional equity, trade, and lease-based instruments already familiar to most bankers.
Islamic finance, after all, permits legitimate profit.

We’re not asking that everything be changed. Just the harmful parts, and eliminating interest would
be the first step.

In all of these cases the bank could not have charged more than the initial financing premium. So if
the Islamic bank was owed $5 billion, that could never turn
into $44 billion or even $6 billion. The debt would have to be
fixed. Throughout our training modules we’ll show you how
these and other Islamic finance products operate.

Let's take another example of how Islamic finance is
different from conventional finance. This time let's make
it a little bit more relevant to our day-to-day lives.


Nick The Homebuyer

Nick has lost his job, his house, and all the money
he had spent paying off his mortgage.

The property bubble that triggered the global
financial meltdown could not have happened if the
properties had been financed Islamically. Why?
Because a conventional bank merely lends out cash. Legally,
it can keep lending this cash over and over. Well above its
actual cash reserves.

An Islamic bank, on the other hand, has to take direct
ownership of an actual asset. Whether for a longer period in a lease or partnership, or a shorter
period in a sale or trade, Islamic finance always limits the institution to an actual asset.

The next time anyone wonders whether Islamic banking is just dressed up conventional banking, ask
them to show you a single major consumer bank that co-owns actual properties with their
customers.

Of course, there’s no excuse for Islamic banks that are Islamic in name only. But if the transaction
complies with internationally recognized standards like AAOIFI, for instance, then there’s no reason
for it to have the many side effects associated with interest-based banking.

To provide just one example of how Islamic banks get directly involved in asset purchases, let’s look
at how a Diminishing Musharakah works. The word Musharakah refers to a partnership in Islamic
finance.



                                     Speech: Why Islamic Finance?                            13
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And it’s called a Diminishing Musharakah because the banks equity keeps decreasing throughout
the tenure of the financing, while the client’s ownership keeps increasing through a series of equity
purchases. Eventually, the client becomes the sole owner.

If Nick had lost his job with a Diminishing Musharakah, at the very least he would still have an
equity stake in an actual property that he could monetize.

Pay close attention to this example because this is something you may want to suggest to your own
local bank. There’s no reason why they can’t do it.

We’ve kept all the numbers and calculations very simple and straightforward for illustration
purposes.

Let’s take a $220,000 house. And let’s say the customer puts down $20,000 and finances the
remaining $200,000 from the Islamic bank. Let’s also say that the financing lasts 20 years and the
bank sets a 5% profit rate. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll make it 20 annual repayments.

In the first column (see Table 3) we have the year. In the second column we have the homebuyer’s
equity purchase, which is how much the buyer pays every year for buying the property’s actual
equity. It’s his way of increasing his ownership in the property, while diminishing the bank’s
ownership, shown in the third column. The fourth column, called Rent, is what the homebuyer pays
the bank for that portion of the property he doesn’t yet own, a number that keeps decreasing as the
bank’s share also decreases. The final column shows what the homebuyer pays in total every year.
Let’s explain to you how we got these numbers, and how simple it is for most banks to put this
together with just the will to take real ownership of an asset.

Let’s go through each column one by one.

The homebuyer’s equity purchase of $10,000 is a simple straight line calculation of the $200,000,
divided by the number of years for the financing, 20 years. We subtract this $10,000 each year from
the bank’s total balance, to get the next column, the bank’s ownership, which, as we see, keeps
going down each year until the bank owns none of the property.

Table 3: Nick’s Diminishing Musharakah


                  Homebuyer's
     Year                             Bank's Ownership ($)       Rent ($)    Homebuyer's Payment ($)
                Equity Purchase ($)

       1              10,000                 190,000             10,000              20,000

       2              10,000                 180,000                 9,500           19,500

       3              10,000                 170,000                 9,000           19,000

       4              10,000                 160,000                 8,500           18,500

       5                 -                       -                     -                -



                                      Speech: Why Islamic Finance?                            14
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                   Homebuyer's
      Year                             Bank's Ownership ($)       Rent ($)    Homebuyer's Payment ($)
                 Equity Purchase ($)

       6                  -                       -                     -                -

       7                  -                       -                     -                -

      16               10,000                   40,000                2,500           12,500

      17               10,000                   30,000                2,000           12,000

      18               10,000                   20,000                1,500           11,500

      19               10,000                   10,000                1,000           11,000

      20               10,000                     -                   500             10,500


Next, we calculate the homebuyer’s rent. This is equal to the bank’s ownership for that period
multiplied by the bank’s profit rate. This number also keeps declining each year, because as the
bank’s ownership declines, so does the homebuyer’s rent.

Lastly, we calculate the homebuyer’s total annual payment. This is simply the homebuyer’s equity
purchase plus his rent. This number also keeps declining each year until the homebuyer eventually
becomes the homeowner.

At no time does the homebuyer pay any interest. And, certainly, at no time does any payment
compound. The homebuyer just pays for two things: the house, in small payments, little by little. And
the rent, for the portion of the house he doesn’t yet own.

This simple structure is something that just about any conventional bank can offer today. It takes a
leap of faith for banks accustomed to interest-based lending to suddenly become direct stakeholders
in property. But as the growth of Islamic banking shows, these concerns are misplaced. Call it
Islamic finance, ethical finance, or conventional finance, when a bank takes real ownership of an
asset, economies don’t fall apart like a house of cards.


Faisal The Student

Now our final example. Talking about indebted countries and property bubbles may seem removed
from our immediate predicament.

What are we talking about? That’s right: personal debt. In the US alone, credit card holders have
amassed over $1 trillion of personal debt. And that’s just credit cards.

Let's take Faisal’s student loan for example.




                                       Speech: Why Islamic Finance?                            15
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His education cost him about $30,000 a year for
four years. That's $120,000. And Faisal had no
savings to start off with. He got an interest rate of
10%, which is fairly typical for many students,
and he began borrowing $30,000 at the beginning
of each year. Three years after graduation he
began paying off his student loans at the rate of
$20,000 per year.

Can you guess how long it took Faisal to pay off
his entire loan?

That’s right. It’ll take him over 25 years to pay off
his loan.

And in the end he spends over $400,000 to pay for his $120,000 education. And that’s assuming
Faisal keeps his well-paying job. If he’s unemployed, the debt just gets bigger.

An Islamic bank, on the other hand, could structure a service-based Ijarah to lease out the
university’s credit hours. Faisal ends up paying about 20% or 30% more; but with the interest-based
loan, he pays about 400% more.

Islamic finance never can, and never will be able to grow Faisal’s debt once it’s fixed.

Principles of Islamic Finance

Let’s now step back for a moment and ask: so how does Islamic finance make any money?

Let’s take a moment to compare banking in general with Islamic finance.

All banking products can largely be divided into the following 4 categories:

    1.   Equity

    2.   Trading

    3.   Leasing, and
    4.   Debt

Equity refers to direct ownership, trading refers to buying and selling, leasing refers to giving an asset
or service out on rent, and debt refers to providing an interest-based loan.

Simply put, Islamic finance permits equity, trade, and lease-based transactions, but forbids debt.

And in many ways we’re already familiar with these kinds of transactions. Here’s most of Islamic
finance in a nutshell:

    •    Mudarabah, Musharakah, and Sukuk are all equity based



                                       Speech: Why Islamic Finance?                              16
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    •   Murabaha, Salam, and Istisna are trade based

    •   And Ijarahs are lease based


Let’s look at some of the basic principles that guide Islamic banks.

These are that transactions must:

    1. Be interest free

    2. Have risk sharing and asset and service backing
    3. Have contractual certainty

    4. And that all the elements of the transaction must, in and of themselves, be ethical


Let’s look at each of these 4 guiding principles.

First, the transaction must be free of interest.

The Islamic ban on interest is not new. For centuries banned by Christians and Jews, the Shariah, or
Islamic Law, prohibits paying or earning interest, irrespective of whether it is a soft, development
loan or a monthly consumption loan.

In fact the Vatican itself has said, “The ethical principles on which Islamic finance is based may
bring banks closer to their clients and to the true spirit which should mark every financial service.”

The examples we’ve seen clearly show the harms of interest, not only to banks and governments but
also to individuals. Islam is concerned with the well-being of society, sometimes at the immediate
expense of the individual. A single interest-based loan may seem harmless, but an entire economy
based on interest can have devastating consequences.

The second principle that governs Islamic finance transactions is the element of risk sharing and
asset and service backing.

The central juristic principle in the Shariah that informs our concept of risk-sharing states: “al ghunm
bil ghurm,” meaning “there is no return without risk.”

Bankers know that the concept of risk sharing is common to all equity-based transactions. Islamic
finance is no different, where profit and loss distribution is commensurate with investment
proportions.

Lending cash on interest is not the kind of risk sharing we’re talking about. In a conventional loan
the bank doesn’t directly involve itself in how the cash is spent. Here’s the cash. See you in a few
months with some extra cash. That’s all. Even with a secured loan, in which the bank takes security
and gets more involved, there is still no direct equity position. The bank still doesn’t own anything.
An Islamic bank, on the other hand, actually takes a direct equity position, or buys a particular asset


                                       Speech: Why Islamic Finance?                            17
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and charges a premium through a trade or a lease. It uses risk mitigants, but not without first taking
ownership risk.

There must also be contractual certainty.

Contracts play a central role in Islam. And the uncertainty of whether a contractual condition will be
fulfilled or not is unacceptable in the Shariah.

Contractual uncertainty happens when the basic prerequisite or integral of a contract is absent, such
as the existence of the subject matter, the fixing of a delivery date, or the agreement on a price.
Conventional insurance, interest, futures and options all contain an element of contractual
uncertainty and are thus prohibited.

And lastly, Islamic finance transactions must be ethical, which means that there is no buying, selling,
or trading in anything that is, in and of itself, impermissible according to the Shariah. Examples
include dealing in conventional banking and insurance, alcohol, and tobacco.

With these basic principles in mind, we invite you to try our introductory training modules before
progressing onto more advanced topics. At Ethica Institute you learn at your own pace. Play, pause,
stop. Anytime, anywhere.

We blend live online training sessions and webinars with convenient e-learning modules, case
studies, quizzes, and the world’s largest database of Q&As available online. We bridge the gap
between scholars and bankers by mixing theory with practical examples; by complementing
authentic Shariah knowledge with real-world banking expertise. And we ensure that everything you
learn complies with the Accounting and Auditing Organization of Islamic Financial Institution’s, or
AAOIFI’s, latest Shariah Standards.

And best of all, we provide you with the only Islamic finance certificate available 100% online.

We look forward to you joining the Islamic finance community. We look forward to seeing you at
EthicaInstitute.com.




                                     Speech: Why Islamic Finance?                            18
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CONTACT ETHICA
Ethica Institute of Islamic Finance
Level 14, Boulevard Plaza - Tower One
Emaar Boulevard, Downtown Dubai
PO Box 127150, Dubai, UAE


Emails are responded to within the same working
day, usually in a few hours.

New inquiries about Ethica's training and
certification:
contact@ethicainstitute.com

Technical help:
support@ethicainstitute.com

Islamic finance questions:
questions@ethicainstitute.com

We take calls Sunday to Thursday from 9am to
5pm Dubai time:
+9714 455 8690

Fax? If you insist:
+9714 455 8556


This version is only a preview. You may download the full 700 page
original e-book from: http://bit.ly/EthicaEbook.

Click here to receive regular updates and the 2014 edition of Ethica’s
Handbook of Islamic Finance.




                                        Contact Ethica          19

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Ethicas handbook of islamic finance (preview)

  • 1. www.EthicaInstitute.com ETHICA’S HANDBOOK OF ISLAMIC FINANCE 2013 EDITION www.EthicaInstitute.com 1
  • 2. www.EthicaInstitute.com © 2013 Published by Ethica Institute of Islamic Finance 1401, Boulevard Plaza, Tower 1 Emaar Boulevard, Downtown Dubai P O Box 127150, Dubai, United Arab Emirates www.EthicaInstitute.com info@EthicaInstitute.com All rights reserved. Aside from fair use, meaning a few pages or less for nonprofit educational purposes, review or academic citation, no part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Copyright owner. Disclaimer: Content in this e-book and available at www.EthicaInstitute.com is provided for education and informational purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose. The information contained in or provided from or through all of Ethica’s content is general in nature and not specific to you or anyone else and is not intended to be and does not constitute financial, legal, investment, trading or any other advice. You understand that you are using any and all information available on or through this and other Ethica content at your own risk. If you are the owner of publishable content that you would like included in the next edition of Ethica’s Handbook of Islamic Finance, please contact us at contact@ethicainstitute.com. Cover photo: Copyright © Sohail Nakhooda 2
  • 3. www.EthicaInstitute.com Ethica’s Handbook of Islamic Finance is a free book designed for you. Everyone is welcome to copy, forward, store, or share all or part of this book for non-commercial use. We only ask that the words be left as they are and that the source be attributed and acknowledged with a link to our website (www.EthicaInstitute.com). This version is only a preview. You may download the full 700 page original e-book from: http://bit.ly/EthicaEbook. Click here to receive regular updates and the 2014 edition of Ethica’s Handbook of Islamic Finance. 3
  • 4. www.EthicaInstitute.com Corruption has appeared in the land and sea, for that men's own hands have earned, that He may let them taste some part of that which they have done, that haply they may return. Quran (30:41) "All that we had borrowed up to 1985 or 1986 was around $5 billion and we have paid about $16 billion yet we are still being told that we owe about $28 billion. That $28 billion came about because of the injustice in the foreign creditors' interest rates. If you ask me what is the worst thing in the world, I will say it is compound interest." President Obasanjo of Nigeria, G8 summit, Okinawa, 2000 4
  • 5. www.EthicaInstitute.com TABLE OF CONTENTS We Believe... 6 Speech 8 Use this speech or the accompanying video at your conference, training session, bank or university. Petitions 19 Use these sample petitions to bring standardized Islamic finance into your community. Articles 24 Use these articles to inform yourself and others about the basics of Islamic finance. Meezan Bank's Guide to Islamic Banking by Dr. Imran Usmani 63 Use this section for a more detailed understanding of the industry’s core products from one of its leading scholars. Islamic Finance Contracts 192 Use these sample contracts to educate yourself and your bank about Islamic finance instruments. CIFE™ Study Notes 298 Use these study notes to help you prepare for Ethica’s Certified Islamic Finance Executive™ (CIFE™) program. Recommended Reading for Practitioners 351 Use this reading list to help develop your worldview on finance. Recommended Reading for Entrepreneurs 358 Use this reading list to help you jump start your Islamic finance idea. Islamic Finance Questions and Answers 362 Use this database of 1,000+ scholar-approved answers to guide your commercial dealings. Glossary of Commonly Used Terminology 643 Use this section to understand the industry’s most commonly used terminology. About Ethica Institute of Islamic Finance 667 About the Certified Islamic Finance Executive™ (CIFE™) 670 Press Releases 676 Subject Index 679 Use this detailed index to quickly search the entire e-book. Contact Ethica 700 5
  • 6. www.EthicaInstitute.com WE BELIEVE... We believe that interest is the root cause of most of the world’s problems. If we did not have compound interest, we would not need compound growth. And if we did not need compound growth, we would not have most of the debt-induced poverty, resource-hungry wars, and runaway climate change we now see. All interest – whether simple interest or compound interest, whether at very low rates or very high rates – grows so fast that we simply cannot keep up. Need an example? Brazil is home to the beautiful Amazon rainforest. This lush wonder supplies us with a quarter of the world’s oxygen. That’s one in every four breaths. Unfortunately, this forest will vanish in our lifetimes. Why? So Brazil can pay off $200 billion of debt. How? With lumber. Or take an example closer to home. Are you or someone you know crushed under growing personal debt? We believe there is a connection between interest and many of the world’s problems. And we believe that Islamic finance can help solve some of these problems. But for this to happen we need two things: the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. For the letter of the law to work, Islamic finance needs to follow some basic minimum standards. Standards that won’t be taken seriously unless central banks start pulling some licenses. The best standard in the industry – de facto in over 90% of the world’s Islamic finance jurisdictions – is AAOIFI (pronounced “a-yo-fee”), which stands for the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions. AAOIFI brings together scholars from all over the world who agree on Shariah standards. If it isn’t AAOIFI-compliant, it probably isn’t Shariah-compliant. We believe that following AAOIFI Shariah Standards – and questioning whether your bank, scholar, or trainer is following them – is a good starting point for following the letter of the law. But we can’t stop there. Islamic finance needs to follow the spirit of the law as well. We need to promote equity-based structures like Musharakah and Mudarabah and reduce our dependence on expedient structures like Murabaha. We need to eliminate Tawarruq. And at a broader level, we need to address the larger problem of fractional debt-reserve banking. Why do banks get to lend money they don’t have? And make money on money that doesn’t exist? Does this make sense? While the reality is that banks aren’t going away anytime soon, a first step to challenging fractional debt-reserve banking is establishing a globally recognized gold-based currency. This immediately forces the market to tie transactions to assets rather than base them on mere numbers inside computers. So where do we start with promoting the law in letter and spirit? We believe it starts with you and me. Manifesto 6
  • 7. www.EthicaInstitute.com If you’re a banker, you can start doing two things at your bank: 1) check that your bank’s products comply with AAOIFI. The latest standards are available at www.aaoifi.com; and 2) start switching to Musharakah and Mudarabah for a variety of activities ranging from liquidity management to trade finance. And if your bank doesn’t offer Islamic finance, start asking why. If you’re a regulator and Islamic finance is already practiced in your jurisdiction, pressure banks to follow AAOIFI or risk having their licenses suspended. At a broader level, support the Islamic microfinance industry. If Islamic finance hasn’t yet reached your jurisdiction, promote awareness with training and educational initiatives. If you’re an entrepreneur, you probably have a skill the Islamic finance industry could use. Dream big: create a company, a community-based institution, a local currency, an ecologically-minded village, or an innovative product. In most countries, people still lack interest-free alternatives to home, education, and healthcare financing. Why is it easier to issue a billion dollar Sukuk than it is to raise a single penny for a Shariah-compliant education financing? How can we better operationalize Zakah? How do we build Waqf-based community-owned trust models? The recommended reading list for entrepreneurs later in this book gets you started with your idea. And if you’re a student, learn Islamic finance. Think beyond the standard career path and seriously consider starting something on your own. Do what you love and success will follow. We believe this century – indeed, the coming years – will be like nothing before. Global heating will mean less food and water. Peak oil will mean less energy. And repeated financial crises will mean less certainty. We can throw our hands up and walk away in resignation. Or we can identify the root problems and do something about it. God only makes us responsible for our actions. He takes care of outcomes. We believe that it’s time to openly question the interest-based paradigm and promote interest-free finance as the proven alternative. But the first step to questioning a paradigm and offering an alternative is to educate yourself. Only then will you believe. And that’s what this book is all about: conviction. Because if you believe, then so will everyone else. Manifesto 7
  • 9. www.EthicaInstitute.com SPEECH: WHY ISLAMIC FINANCE? You are free to read all or part of this speech or play the video at conferences, training sessions, banks and universities. What do President Obasanjo of Nigeria, Nick the UK homebuyer, and Faisal the American college student all have in common? They’re all trying to pay off loans that seem to increase every single day. What started off with a seemingly small interest rate ballooned into something completely unattainable. We’ll look at each of their examples a little later. First, let’s answer the big question on everyone’s mind: How is Islamic finance different from conventional PLAY NOW finance? It looks the same. The result is often the same. What’s the difference? Well, the best way to find out is with a simple, real-world comparison. Let’s take $10,000, for instance. And let's compare what a conventional bank can do with this $10,000 and what an Islamic bank can do. First, the conventional bank. The conventional bank finds a credit worthy customer and lends at 5% interest. The bank is not particularly concerned about what happens to this money other than that it gets repaid. The customer, on the other hand, has already found a borrower willing to pay 7%. This borrower runs a small credit co-op for students and lends at 10%. One of these students is enterprising enough to lend to his unemployed brother at 15%. Who has just discovered the power of compounding interest and now lends to street vendors at 25%. We could go on. But you get the idea. As we speak, there are poor people paying upwards of 40%...per month! Now obviously we can’t blame conventional banks for everything that happens after they’ve made the initial loan. But we can blame the power of compounded interest.” Interest, and the fact that you don’t need actual cash to lend money means that the original $10,000 could keep passing hands until we pump out over $100,000 of artificial wealth. Artificial is right. How much actual cash is there? Only $10,000. With interest, we managed to turn $10,000 into much more. Speech: Why Islamic Finance? 9
  • 10. www.EthicaInstitute.com Now what happens if the street vendors go out of business? Or the unemployed brother doesn’t find his job? Or the credit co-op goes bankrupt? That’s right. Loans don’t get repaid. And if enough people can’t repay their loans, lenders get into all sorts of trouble. This vicious cycle sets off a domino effect of defaults. And imagine that instead of a $10,000 personal loan, it’s a million dollar business loan, or a billion dollar World Bank loan. Compounding interest grows so fast that borrowers are often unable to repay. People, economies, and the environment pay the price as we grow more desperate to meet rising debts. So are we surprised when billions of dollars vanish into thin air? Let’s take the example of the Islamic bank. With this $10,000 the Islamic bank only invests in actual assets and services. It might buy machinery, lease out a car, or invest in a small business. But, throughout, the transaction is always tied to a real asset or service. And this is the central point: we can’t simply “compound” assets and services like we can compound interest-based loans. An asset or service can only have one buyer and one seller at any given time. Interest, on the other hand, allows cash to circulate and grow into enormous sums. That’s the difference between Islamic finance and conventional finance: the difference between buying and selling something real and borrowing and lending something fleeting. In recent years we’ve witnessed the most dramatic global financial downturn seen in decades. What began as a housing bubble soon became a sub-prime credit crisis. And what many thought would remain a credit crisis soon spread into a global financial meltdown. It devastated every corner of the world. And while these events affected most of us negatively, there was one silver lining: people finally gave a serious look at alternative forms of finance. And many people stopped believing that interest could solve all problems. Understanding what caused these events serves as our starting point for understanding Islamic finance, and how it differs from conventional finance. What conventional finance enables is the ability to sell money when there is no money. To sell assets before there are any underlying assets. And to allow debts to grow unchecked while borrowers become more desperate. Interest creates an artificial money supply that isn’t backed by real assets. The result? Increased inflation, heightened volatility, richer rich, and poorer poor. Let’s look at 3 practical examples that show just how Islamic finance is different from, and better than, conventional finance. And while Islamic finance parts ways with conventional finance on more than just being interest-free, we’ll focus on interest in this talk. Speech: Why Islamic Finance? 10
  • 11. www.EthicaInstitute.com We’ll look at 3 people in 3 very different, real-world situations: the first is the leader of a developing country: President Obasanjo of Nigeria; the second is Nick, a homebuyer in the UK, and the third is Faisal, an American college student. Debt-Laden Country: Nigeria We begin by quoting President Obasanjo who said these words after the G8 summit in Okinawa in 2000: "All that we had borrowed up to 1985 or 1986 was around $5 billion and we have paid about $16 billion yet we are still being told that we owe about $28 billion. That $28 billion came about because of the injustice in the foreign creditors' interest rates. If you ask me what is the worst thing in the world, I will say it is compound interest." It seems unbelievable but, sadly, it’s typical. Developing countries start off with relatively small loans and remain saddled with huge amounts of growing debt for generations. And remember, this could be Nigeria, or any other poor country. To give just one other example, during the years leading up to the 1997 Asian collapse, Indonesia’s foreign debt as a percentage of GDP was over 60%. So Nigeria is certainly not an isolated example. There are countless more. How did borrowing just $5 billion end up in having to pay $44 billion in total? Let's open up a spreadsheet and find out. For the sake of simplicity we’ll just grow $5 billion into $44 billion between 1985 and 2000 and see what interest rate we get. It must've been a very high interest rate to get to $44 billion in such a short period of time. So let’s start off with 40% per annum. No that's not right. Table 1: $5 billion growing at 40% Year Debt 1985 5,000,000,000 1986 7,000,000,000 1987 9,800,000,000 - - 1997 283,469,561,876 1998 396,857,386,627 1999 555,600,341,278 2000 777,840,477,789 Speech: Why Islamic Finance? 11
  • 12. www.EthicaInstitute.com Let's try 30%. That still gives us a very high number. Table 2: $5 billion growing at 30% Year Debt 1985 5,000,000,000 1986 6,500,000,000 1987 8,450,000,000 1988 10,985,000,000 - - 1997 116,490,425,612 1998 151,437,553,296 1999 196,868,819,285 2000 255,929,465,070 It turns out that to grow $5 billion into $44 billion takes an interest rate of only 15.6%. Now on the face of it around 15% doesn't sound exorbitant. It doesn't seem unfair, and technically it isn't even illegal according to international law. In fact, we personally know of banks that charge high-risk credits upwards of 30% interest rates. But every day numerous countries find themselves in the same predicament as Nigeria. UNICEF estimates that over half a million children under the age of five die each year around the world as a result of the debt crisis. But as we’ve seen, it’s not the debt that’s the problem. It’s the compounding interest. Now how would Islamic finance handle things differently? Using the $5 billion example, Islamic banks could provide $5 billion of financing for infrastructure, literacy, healthcare, or sanitation programs, to name a few. • An Islamic bank could have arranged for the $4 billion construction of a natural gas pipeline and delivered it to Nigeria for $5 billion using an Istisna. • Or taken an equity stake in a highway project and shared in profits and losses using Musharakah or Mudarabah. • Or purchased commodities and sold them at a premium using a Murabaha. • Or structured a project financing using an Ijarah Sukuk. Speech: Why Islamic Finance? 12
  • 13. www.EthicaInstitute.com These names may sound new to you, but as we explain them in our training modules, they’re much like conventional equity, trade, and lease-based instruments already familiar to most bankers. Islamic finance, after all, permits legitimate profit. We’re not asking that everything be changed. Just the harmful parts, and eliminating interest would be the first step. In all of these cases the bank could not have charged more than the initial financing premium. So if the Islamic bank was owed $5 billion, that could never turn into $44 billion or even $6 billion. The debt would have to be fixed. Throughout our training modules we’ll show you how these and other Islamic finance products operate. Let's take another example of how Islamic finance is different from conventional finance. This time let's make it a little bit more relevant to our day-to-day lives. Nick The Homebuyer Nick has lost his job, his house, and all the money he had spent paying off his mortgage. The property bubble that triggered the global financial meltdown could not have happened if the properties had been financed Islamically. Why? Because a conventional bank merely lends out cash. Legally, it can keep lending this cash over and over. Well above its actual cash reserves. An Islamic bank, on the other hand, has to take direct ownership of an actual asset. Whether for a longer period in a lease or partnership, or a shorter period in a sale or trade, Islamic finance always limits the institution to an actual asset. The next time anyone wonders whether Islamic banking is just dressed up conventional banking, ask them to show you a single major consumer bank that co-owns actual properties with their customers. Of course, there’s no excuse for Islamic banks that are Islamic in name only. But if the transaction complies with internationally recognized standards like AAOIFI, for instance, then there’s no reason for it to have the many side effects associated with interest-based banking. To provide just one example of how Islamic banks get directly involved in asset purchases, let’s look at how a Diminishing Musharakah works. The word Musharakah refers to a partnership in Islamic finance. Speech: Why Islamic Finance? 13
  • 14. www.EthicaInstitute.com And it’s called a Diminishing Musharakah because the banks equity keeps decreasing throughout the tenure of the financing, while the client’s ownership keeps increasing through a series of equity purchases. Eventually, the client becomes the sole owner. If Nick had lost his job with a Diminishing Musharakah, at the very least he would still have an equity stake in an actual property that he could monetize. Pay close attention to this example because this is something you may want to suggest to your own local bank. There’s no reason why they can’t do it. We’ve kept all the numbers and calculations very simple and straightforward for illustration purposes. Let’s take a $220,000 house. And let’s say the customer puts down $20,000 and finances the remaining $200,000 from the Islamic bank. Let’s also say that the financing lasts 20 years and the bank sets a 5% profit rate. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll make it 20 annual repayments. In the first column (see Table 3) we have the year. In the second column we have the homebuyer’s equity purchase, which is how much the buyer pays every year for buying the property’s actual equity. It’s his way of increasing his ownership in the property, while diminishing the bank’s ownership, shown in the third column. The fourth column, called Rent, is what the homebuyer pays the bank for that portion of the property he doesn’t yet own, a number that keeps decreasing as the bank’s share also decreases. The final column shows what the homebuyer pays in total every year. Let’s explain to you how we got these numbers, and how simple it is for most banks to put this together with just the will to take real ownership of an asset. Let’s go through each column one by one. The homebuyer’s equity purchase of $10,000 is a simple straight line calculation of the $200,000, divided by the number of years for the financing, 20 years. We subtract this $10,000 each year from the bank’s total balance, to get the next column, the bank’s ownership, which, as we see, keeps going down each year until the bank owns none of the property. Table 3: Nick’s Diminishing Musharakah Homebuyer's Year Bank's Ownership ($) Rent ($) Homebuyer's Payment ($) Equity Purchase ($) 1 10,000 190,000 10,000 20,000 2 10,000 180,000 9,500 19,500 3 10,000 170,000 9,000 19,000 4 10,000 160,000 8,500 18,500 5 - - - - Speech: Why Islamic Finance? 14
  • 15. www.EthicaInstitute.com Homebuyer's Year Bank's Ownership ($) Rent ($) Homebuyer's Payment ($) Equity Purchase ($) 6 - - - - 7 - - - - 16 10,000 40,000 2,500 12,500 17 10,000 30,000 2,000 12,000 18 10,000 20,000 1,500 11,500 19 10,000 10,000 1,000 11,000 20 10,000 - 500 10,500 Next, we calculate the homebuyer’s rent. This is equal to the bank’s ownership for that period multiplied by the bank’s profit rate. This number also keeps declining each year, because as the bank’s ownership declines, so does the homebuyer’s rent. Lastly, we calculate the homebuyer’s total annual payment. This is simply the homebuyer’s equity purchase plus his rent. This number also keeps declining each year until the homebuyer eventually becomes the homeowner. At no time does the homebuyer pay any interest. And, certainly, at no time does any payment compound. The homebuyer just pays for two things: the house, in small payments, little by little. And the rent, for the portion of the house he doesn’t yet own. This simple structure is something that just about any conventional bank can offer today. It takes a leap of faith for banks accustomed to interest-based lending to suddenly become direct stakeholders in property. But as the growth of Islamic banking shows, these concerns are misplaced. Call it Islamic finance, ethical finance, or conventional finance, when a bank takes real ownership of an asset, economies don’t fall apart like a house of cards. Faisal The Student Now our final example. Talking about indebted countries and property bubbles may seem removed from our immediate predicament. What are we talking about? That’s right: personal debt. In the US alone, credit card holders have amassed over $1 trillion of personal debt. And that’s just credit cards. Let's take Faisal’s student loan for example. Speech: Why Islamic Finance? 15
  • 16. www.EthicaInstitute.com His education cost him about $30,000 a year for four years. That's $120,000. And Faisal had no savings to start off with. He got an interest rate of 10%, which is fairly typical for many students, and he began borrowing $30,000 at the beginning of each year. Three years after graduation he began paying off his student loans at the rate of $20,000 per year. Can you guess how long it took Faisal to pay off his entire loan? That’s right. It’ll take him over 25 years to pay off his loan. And in the end he spends over $400,000 to pay for his $120,000 education. And that’s assuming Faisal keeps his well-paying job. If he’s unemployed, the debt just gets bigger. An Islamic bank, on the other hand, could structure a service-based Ijarah to lease out the university’s credit hours. Faisal ends up paying about 20% or 30% more; but with the interest-based loan, he pays about 400% more. Islamic finance never can, and never will be able to grow Faisal’s debt once it’s fixed. Principles of Islamic Finance Let’s now step back for a moment and ask: so how does Islamic finance make any money? Let’s take a moment to compare banking in general with Islamic finance. All banking products can largely be divided into the following 4 categories: 1. Equity 2. Trading 3. Leasing, and 4. Debt Equity refers to direct ownership, trading refers to buying and selling, leasing refers to giving an asset or service out on rent, and debt refers to providing an interest-based loan. Simply put, Islamic finance permits equity, trade, and lease-based transactions, but forbids debt. And in many ways we’re already familiar with these kinds of transactions. Here’s most of Islamic finance in a nutshell: • Mudarabah, Musharakah, and Sukuk are all equity based Speech: Why Islamic Finance? 16
  • 17. www.EthicaInstitute.com • Murabaha, Salam, and Istisna are trade based • And Ijarahs are lease based Let’s look at some of the basic principles that guide Islamic banks. These are that transactions must: 1. Be interest free 2. Have risk sharing and asset and service backing 3. Have contractual certainty 4. And that all the elements of the transaction must, in and of themselves, be ethical Let’s look at each of these 4 guiding principles. First, the transaction must be free of interest. The Islamic ban on interest is not new. For centuries banned by Christians and Jews, the Shariah, or Islamic Law, prohibits paying or earning interest, irrespective of whether it is a soft, development loan or a monthly consumption loan. In fact the Vatican itself has said, “The ethical principles on which Islamic finance is based may bring banks closer to their clients and to the true spirit which should mark every financial service.” The examples we’ve seen clearly show the harms of interest, not only to banks and governments but also to individuals. Islam is concerned with the well-being of society, sometimes at the immediate expense of the individual. A single interest-based loan may seem harmless, but an entire economy based on interest can have devastating consequences. The second principle that governs Islamic finance transactions is the element of risk sharing and asset and service backing. The central juristic principle in the Shariah that informs our concept of risk-sharing states: “al ghunm bil ghurm,” meaning “there is no return without risk.” Bankers know that the concept of risk sharing is common to all equity-based transactions. Islamic finance is no different, where profit and loss distribution is commensurate with investment proportions. Lending cash on interest is not the kind of risk sharing we’re talking about. In a conventional loan the bank doesn’t directly involve itself in how the cash is spent. Here’s the cash. See you in a few months with some extra cash. That’s all. Even with a secured loan, in which the bank takes security and gets more involved, there is still no direct equity position. The bank still doesn’t own anything. An Islamic bank, on the other hand, actually takes a direct equity position, or buys a particular asset Speech: Why Islamic Finance? 17
  • 18. www.EthicaInstitute.com and charges a premium through a trade or a lease. It uses risk mitigants, but not without first taking ownership risk. There must also be contractual certainty. Contracts play a central role in Islam. And the uncertainty of whether a contractual condition will be fulfilled or not is unacceptable in the Shariah. Contractual uncertainty happens when the basic prerequisite or integral of a contract is absent, such as the existence of the subject matter, the fixing of a delivery date, or the agreement on a price. Conventional insurance, interest, futures and options all contain an element of contractual uncertainty and are thus prohibited. And lastly, Islamic finance transactions must be ethical, which means that there is no buying, selling, or trading in anything that is, in and of itself, impermissible according to the Shariah. Examples include dealing in conventional banking and insurance, alcohol, and tobacco. With these basic principles in mind, we invite you to try our introductory training modules before progressing onto more advanced topics. At Ethica Institute you learn at your own pace. Play, pause, stop. Anytime, anywhere. We blend live online training sessions and webinars with convenient e-learning modules, case studies, quizzes, and the world’s largest database of Q&As available online. We bridge the gap between scholars and bankers by mixing theory with practical examples; by complementing authentic Shariah knowledge with real-world banking expertise. And we ensure that everything you learn complies with the Accounting and Auditing Organization of Islamic Financial Institution’s, or AAOIFI’s, latest Shariah Standards. And best of all, we provide you with the only Islamic finance certificate available 100% online. We look forward to you joining the Islamic finance community. We look forward to seeing you at EthicaInstitute.com. Speech: Why Islamic Finance? 18
  • 19. www.EthicaInstitute.com CONTACT ETHICA Ethica Institute of Islamic Finance Level 14, Boulevard Plaza - Tower One Emaar Boulevard, Downtown Dubai PO Box 127150, Dubai, UAE Emails are responded to within the same working day, usually in a few hours. New inquiries about Ethica's training and certification: contact@ethicainstitute.com Technical help: support@ethicainstitute.com Islamic finance questions: questions@ethicainstitute.com We take calls Sunday to Thursday from 9am to 5pm Dubai time: +9714 455 8690 Fax? If you insist: +9714 455 8556 This version is only a preview. You may download the full 700 page original e-book from: http://bit.ly/EthicaEbook. Click here to receive regular updates and the 2014 edition of Ethica’s Handbook of Islamic Finance. Contact Ethica 19