Search results

Islamic social finance assists in achieving social good and economic justice in societies by closing the gap between rich and poor in a Shariah compliant framework. COVID-19 pandemic has created the opportunity to experience the untapped potential of Islamic social finance in many of the countries. This chapter sheds light on the use of Islamic social finance in Iran in the midst of the pandemic with the objective of sharing some Shariah compliant financial solutions for reducing undesirable consequences of the COVID-19. Iran is a country that has a unique Islamic financial system. Currently, it is the country where constitutionally and statutorily practices only shariah-compliant financing activities. This chapter reveals that tradability of justice shares, introduction of Shariah-compliant crowdfunding platforms, provision of Islamic microfinance vehicles in the form of Al-Qard Al-Hassan loans, payment facilities to factories damaged by COVID-19, low-profit rate Murabaha facilities for housing sector are some Shariah-compliant social finance products which were provided in Iran in the midst of the pandemic to provide financial solutions to fulfil the need of the society in a convenient and effective manner.

The sustainable development goals (SDGs) devised by the United Nations (UN) call on countries – whether rich or poor – to solve global issues, improve lives and save the planet for future generations. However, the UN predicts that between $5 and $7tn will need to be spent annually between now and 2030 to accomplish these goals, posing a major financial hurdle. Islamic social finance, if used ethically, seeks to realise SDGs through fairness, justice and equity. Thus, this study aims to determine how Islamic social finance instruments such as Zakat, Waqf, Sadaqat and Qard-hasan contribute to realising SDGs.

This study used a preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses-based systematic literature review. Scopus and Google Scholar were chosen for the qualitative and meta-analysis of studies. The topic was reviewed in 178 academic papers from 2000 to 2022. The required articles were analysed after careful review.

Islamic social financing mechanisms have the capacity to solve many social issues and create better welfare conditions by ensuring economic, social and environmental sustainability in line with the SDGs. Indonesia and Malaysia lead Islamic social finance research, the survey found. The review revealed that Islamic social funding can achieve 11 out of 17 SDGs. Islamic commercial finance can be used for the remaining goals. The paper highlights Islamic social funding research limitations and opportunities.

The review study shows that Islamic social finance can fill the SDG funding gap, especially considering the post-pandemic financial crisis that has increased global income inequality and social disparities.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this article is the first of its kind to review the potential of Islamic social financing instruments to help achieve the SDGs.

Islamic banks, despite being Shariah-compliant, have long been criticized for mimicking conventional banks in terms of their products and processes (Khan, 2010; Kuran, 1996). However, several Islamic banks do engage in philanthropy (zakat and charity) and risk-sharing financing (mudarabah and musharakah) instruments that better meet their raison d'etre, the fulfillment of Maqasid al-Shariah (Jatmiko et al., 2023). These contracts, however, are more susceptible to moral hazard and adverse selection problems than traditional debt-based finance (Azmat et al., 2015) and may impair Islamic bank stability. This paper explores the relationship between social finance and the stability of Islamic banks, and whether institutional quality moderates this relationship.

Using hand-collected annual data on social finance from 12 Islamic banks in four countries: Bangladesh, Bahrain, Indonesia and Malaysia, between 2006 and 2019, the authors employ the feasible generalized least squares and the panel-corrected standard errors methods for the analysis. The Stata version 16 software was used to analyze the data for the study.

The results indicate that mudarabah and musharakah financing raises the stability of Islamic banks. The authors also found that mudarabah and musharakah expose Islamic banks to more risk-taking behavior amidst the conditioning effect of institutional quality. On the other hand, charity induces the stability of Islamic banks, while zakat increases the risk-taking behavior of the banks. Further, when the quality of institutions was used as a moderator, both zakat and charity induced the stability of Islamic banks. The results were robust when liquidity risk was used and partially robust when portfolio risks were employed as measures of stability.

One concern regarding the application of Islamic social finance is that it might be a risky strategy for Islamic banks. In terms of research implications, the available evidence suggests that the use of Islamic social finance instruments is not detrimental to the stability of Islamic banks. Hence, regulators and policymakers should not penalize Islamic banks for using Islamic social finance instruments that help provide financial solutions to the underserved and unserved. In terms of research limitations, the study could not include other relevant Islamic social finance instruments such as waqf and qard al-hassan. Furthermore, data availability restricts the analysis to only 12 Islamic banks in fourcountries. As more Islamic banks in different countries venture into Islamic social finance, and the quantity and quality of information improve, future studies could explore the issue further.

The available evidence suggests that the use of Islamic social finance instruments does not worsen the stability of Islamic banks. Given the dominance of sale- and lease-based contracts in Islamic financing (Aggarwal and Yousef, 2000; Šeho et al., 2020), these findings should encourage other Islamic banks to provide financial solutions using other Shariah-compliant contracts including those based on risk-sharing and philanthropy. This would be a better reflection of the Islamic banks’ value proposition as it helps boost social activities that have a high impact on the activities of small businesses, contributing to the real economy and promoting well-being in society.

Previous studies mainly relied on mudarabah, mushakarah and zakat separately as they relate to the performance of Islamic banks. This study explores the impact of social finance which includes charity and zakat to examine their impact on Islamic banks’ stability. Further, the authors use institutional quality as a moderating variable in the relationship between Islamic social finance instruments and the stability of Islamic banks.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-06-2022-0441

Bringing more impact seems to be a real issue for social initiatives and organizations requiring the adoption of new approaches. The paper aims to define an integrated approach for building, maintaining and upgrading Islamic social finance and sustainable ecosystems.

The paper presents a conceptual framework based on case studies and literature review describing the methodology and the necessary steps to build sustainable ecosystems.

The paper shows the impact of building social finance ecosystems on tackling social issues. It emphasizes the idea that solving social issues is everybody’s business – from governments to businesses – and that those initiatives require sufficient Sharīʿah-compliant funding to achieve sustainability goals.

The paper does not focus on the Islamic world experiences in building ecosystems serving social causes.

The paper gives an overview on how collaboration between the different social oriented organisations can enhance the social impact of the different initiatives. The aim is to ensure adequate financing to all the ecosystem components during the whole lifecycle.

The suggested approach of building sustainable ecosystems can serve as a way to assess the existing social initiatives and practices to find relevant combinations targeting more impact.

In the social sphere, the idea of building ecosystems has been explored in different ways but never in a way that gathers all the components including finance providers, coordinators and the different types of initiatives. The paper adapts the ecosystem concept to the Islamic finance specificities.

This paper aims to study the main trends of scientific research in Islamic finance’s social aspects to clarify place, role and functions, especially in the context of increasing social problems. To achieve this goal, this paper focuses on the social component of Islamic finance, analyzes publications on social Islamic finance in the Web of Science database, covering the period from 1979 to 2020, specify the geographical localization of research networks, determines the most cited authors and their scientific position.

The authors have applied several literature review techniques, a bibliometric citation and co-citation analysis, a co-authorship analysis and a review of the most cited papers. The analyzes’ results allow us to offer five future questions in Islamic social finance, zakat and waqf, which have not been investigated before and could influence Islamic social finance and Islamic finance research.

The authors also derive and summarize five leading future research questions.

This is a limitation of using only the Web of Science Core Collection database as the premier resource and the most trusted citation index for the world’s scientific and scholarly research. Further study might expand the types of analyzed units, include more keywords and include other databases, such as Scopus.

This paper can be considered as an inspirational one to future researchers and policymakers in Islamic social finance.

This paper aims to explore different forms and models of integration between Islamic commercial finance and social finance including the problem that arise as well as the solution of each of the models to promote inclusive economic growth. At the end of the paper, the authors have identified the strategy to execute and validate by the decision-makers.

This approach uses two methods which are Delphi and analytical network process (ANP). The authors conduct literature review and four rounds Delphi to construct the integration model, the problem and solution of each model, as well as the questionnaire of ANP. Moreover, using an ANP method, the authors conducted interviews with decision-makers in the areas of Islamic commercial finance as well as social finance, and analyzed the results to identify key models that would create inclusivity and quality of economic growth. To ensure credibility of the results, the authors selected the respondents based on their experience in the fields, as well as their unique perspectives that will complement the group as a whole.

After conducting the four rounds Delphi, the authors found five types of Islamic social and commercial integration which are the ownership, institutional, operational, bottom line and mandatory integration. Based on the analysis of the ANP result, the authors argue that all integration can help the country in attaining with the support of government in terms of making the integration as a vision as well as to push the education of social finance more to the stakeholders.

This study is among the emerging studies that explore operational aspects of integration of social and commercial finance within the context of inclusive growth strategy.

This chapter uses Islamic finance to question the universality of contemporary finance leading principles. It establishes the existence of different financial paradigms and attempts to determine the form that might take operations in a non-profit maximising context.

This chapter uses Thomas Kuhn’s notion of paradigm to demonstrate that Islamic finance has its own dominant logic and, hence, cannot be reduced to a subset of contemporary finance. It describes how the former has been infused by the leading principles of the latter following the adoption by the Islamic financial field of an accounting system using a conventional referential as a point of reference. Finally, the chapter elaborates on the form that might take financing if profit maximisation is not the operation’s main purpose.

If the condition of profit maximisation is relaxed, the utilisation of Islamic finance instruments might lead to the creation of economical microcycles able to enlarge the socio-economic reach of financing operation.

The notion of economic intermediation is introduced to describe the operations of Islamic banks using their instruments in a non-maximising context. This approach should not be restricted to Islamic finance but viewed as the result of a case study advocating for an alternative view of finance favouring socio-economic development.

The purpose of this paper is to find out the possible gaps in the Sharīʿah governance, and suggest how to fill the same, in line with the principles of Islamic finance and the global developments regarding social and value-based financial intermediation.

The paper uses secondary data gathered through analysis of documents and regulations to portray the current Sharīʿah governance framework and to suggest a unique paradigm to be adopted by the regulators of Islamic financial institutions.

The paradigm encompassing value-oriented financial ecosystem would need a comprehensive set of discipline, accountability and governance for making the pursuit of sustainable development goals and corporate social responsibilities effective in a well-defined schedule prepared and implemented by the regulators.

The scope of this research is limited to theory building in the light of emerging trends in responsible and social finance. It is not to empirically test the impact of the governance framework in terms of social justice, corporate responsibility and sustainability.

It would help the policy makers, regulators, researchers and the practitioners in finance to align banking and finance with social and environmental responsibility, and equity through governance and accountability for realizing the sustainable development goals.

It links the regulatory approaches to the emerging paradigm and ecosystem comprising sustainability and value-based governance, awareness and corporate social responsibility.

The paper adds value to the current regulatory frameworks enabling the Islamic financial institutions to realize the economic, social and sustainability objectives, in addition to Shariah legitimacy and enhanced credibility.

This paper aims to conceptualize the nexus between the participatory finance and the higher ethical objectives within the Islamic moral economy, also termed as Maqasid al Shari’ah.

Insights from the extant Islamic economics and finance literature are integrated through an interpretative systematic review using the principles from critical interpretative synthesis (CIS).

A coherent framework is synthesized comprising the typology of the Maqasid al Shari’ah, the axioms of participatory finance and their nexus which is formulated by theorizing the common thread of meaning through the axioms of participatory finance and Maqasid al Shari’ah at the interpretative level. This framework postulates that the participatory finance fits well in the ethos and the value system of Islam. Moreover, “social well-being” invariably provides the nexus between the Maqasid al Shari’ah and participatory finance.

This study contributes to the Islamic economics and finance literature by integrating the dissenting views from the divergent literature related to the basic philosophy of Shari’ah and participatory finance and provides grounds for policy implications, particularly, for designing the financial products. Moreover, it demonstrates an application of interpretative systematic review in Islamic banking and finance research.

The purpose of this study is to conduct a systematic content review and bibliometric analysis of the current research trends, core concepts and knowledge mapping on the topic Islamic Banking and Finance (IBF) during Covid-19. Apart from highlighting the contributions of prolific authors, prominent institutions and countries, a comprehensive review of a significant number of documents using co-citation and co-word analysis is carried out for the science mapping.

A data set of 125 papers was collected published in Scopus database during the period December, 2019 and January 5th, 2023. Yearly publications, most-cited papers and authors, active sources, affiliations and countries are highlighted with descriptive analysis. Knowledge structure of the topic was mapped with investigating the social, intellectual and conceptual structures of IBF research. Content analysis is carried out to uncover the underlying research clusters that shape the scientific knowledge structure of studies.

A diverse group of authors and institutions contribute to the growing body of knowledge on the topic. IBF is adopting new paradigms and frameworks to integrate FinTech, crowd funding and Islamic social finance to provide sustainable solutions in both crisis and normal periods. The research on IBF is classified in to three themes: “financial markets in Covid-19,” “modeling risk and market regimes” and “FinTech and Islamic social finance.”

This study collects data only from Scopus database. Future studies must include research articles from other databases such as, Web of Sciences.

This study highlights research gaps in the existing literature and provides directions for future research.