Hide Notes 

Slide 1: HANDBOOK OF ISLAMIC BANKING
Slide 3: Handbook of Islamic Banking Edited by M. Kabir Hassan University of New Orleans, USA Mervyn K. Lewis Professor of Banking and Finance, University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia ELGAR ORIGINAL REFERENCE Edward Elgar Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA
Slide 4: © M. Kabir Hassan and Mervyn K. Lewis 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Edward Elgar Publishing Limited Glensanda House Montpellier Parade Cheltenham Glos GL50 1UA UK Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. William Pratt House 9 Dewey Court Northampton Massachusetts 01060 USA A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Control Number: 2006934135 ISBN 978 1 84542 083 3 (cased) Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall
Slide 5: Contents List of figures List of tables List of contributors Glossary 1 Islamic banking: an introduction and overview M. Kabir Hassan and Mervyn K. Lewis FOUNDATIONS OF ISLAMIC FINANCING 21 38 49 64 vii viii ix xvii 1 PART I 2 3 4 5 Development of Islamic economic and social thought Masudul Alam Choudhury Islamic critique of conventional financing Latifa M. Algaoud and Mervyn K. Lewis Profit-and-loss sharing contracts in Islamic finance Abbas Mirakhor and Iqbal Zaidi Comparing Islamic and Christian attitudes to usury Mervyn K. Lewis OPERATIONS OF ISLAMIC BANKS PART II 6 7 8 9 10 Incentive compatibility of Islamic financing Humayon A. Dar Operational efficiency and performance of Islamic banks Kym Brown, M. Kabir Hassan and Michael Skully Marketing of Islamic financial products Said M. Elfakhani, Imad J. Zbib and Zafar U. Ahmed Governance of Islamic banks Volker Nienhaus Risk management in Islamic banking Habib Ahmed and Tariqullah Khan INSTRUMENTS AND MARKETS 85 96 116 128 144 PART III 11 12 13 Islamic money market instruments Sam R. Hakim Trade financing in Islam Ridha Saadallah Securitization in Islam Mohammed Obaidullah 161 172 191 v
Slide 6: vi 14 15 16 Handbook of Islamic banking Islamic project finance Michael J.T. McMillen Islam and speculation in the stock exchange Seif El-Din Tag El-Din and M. Kabir Hassan Islamic mutual funds Said M. Elfakhani, M. Kabir Hassan and Yusuf M. Sidani 200 240 256 PART IV ISLAMIC SYSTEMS 17 18 19 20 21 Islamic banks and economic development Monzer Kahf Islamic methods for government borrowing and monetary management M. Fahim Khan Accounting standards for Islamic financial services Simon Archer and Rifaat Ahmed Abdel Karim Mutualization of Islamic banks Mahmoud A. El-Gamal Challenges facing the Islamic financial industry M. Umer Chapra GLOBALIZATION OF ISLAMIC BANKING 361 384 401 419 277 285 302 310 325 PART V 22 23 24 25 International Islamic financial institutions Munawar Iqbal Islamic financial centres Ricardo Baba Islamic banking and the growth of takaful Mohd Ma’sum Billah Islamic banking in the West Rodney Wilson Index 433
Slide 7: Figures 3.1 6.1 9.1 13.1 13.2 13.3 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 14.5 14.6 14.7 14.8 22.1 24.1 24.2 24.3 24.4 24.5 24.6 24.7 24.8 Different forms of riba Structure of a murabaha-based option contract Stylized governance structures of conventional and Islamic banks Process of securitization in mainstream markets Murabaha-based securitization Ijara-based securitization Investment structure Conventional loan agreement Reallocation of provisions in shari’a-compliant structures Site lease, equity and debt funding: construction arrangements Overall transaction (without collateral security documents) Collateral security Generic model of a sukuk al-ijara Sukuk al-mudaraba structure Major shareholders of IDB Islam, shari’a, banking and finance Illustration of the Ta’awuni concept The wakala model Example of calculation of general takaful fund (wakala) Example of calculation of family takaful fund (wakala) Steps in the settlement of a claim Example of calculation of general takaful fund (tijari) Example of calculation of family takaful fund (tijari) 43 89 129 192 195 196 208 210 211 213 215 218 229 230 362 403 410 411 412 413 415 417 418 vii
Slide 8: Tables 6.1 6.2 6.3 7.1 7.2 7.3 8.1 8.2 8.3 10.1 10.2 11.1 12.1 22.1 22.2 22.3 23.1 23.2 Incentive features of some Islamic financing modes Payoffs under a murabaha-based option contract A comparison of conventional and Islamic shorting strategies Fundamental differences between Islamic and conventional banking Aggregate performance data for 11 countries: Islamic v. conventional banks (1998–2003) Financial results of Islamic banks (2004) Prominent Islamic banks in the Middle East Ranking of top Islamic banks in the Arab world Top Islamic debt managers (July 2004–May 2005) Risk perception: risks in different modes of financing Scores of aspects of risk management systems for Islamic banks Some Islamic money market instruments A brief account of the methods of financing trade transactions in an Islamic framework IDB financing operations ICIEC insurance products AAOIFI standards Islamic banks and financial institutions in Bahrain (30 March 2005) Islamic banking system in Malaysia (31 May 2005) 87 89 92 98 100 109 116 118 118 147 149 169 188 364 370 376 386 392 viii
Slide 9: Contributors Habib Ahmed joined the Islamic Research and Training Institute of the Islamic Development Bank in 1999. Prior to this he taught at the University of Connecticut, USA, the National University of Singapore and the University of Bahrain. He has an MA (Economics) from the University of Chittagong, Bangladesh, Cand. Oecon. from the University of Oslo, Norway, and a PhD from University of Connecticut, USA. Dr Ahmed has more than 30 publications, the most recent including The Islamic Financial System and Economic Development, Operational Structure of Islamic Equity Finance, A Microeconomic Model of an Islamic Bank, Exchange Rate Stability: Theory and Policies from an Islamic Perspective, Corporate Governance in Islamic Financial Institutions (with M. Umer Chapra) and Risk Management: An Analysis of Issues in Islamic Financial Industry (with Tariqullah Khan). Zafar U. Ahmed has the Chair of Marketing and International Business at the Texas A&M University at Commerce, Texas, USA. He received a BBA in International Business from the University of the State of New York’s Regents College at Albany, New York, an MBA in International Business from the Texas A&M International University, Laredo, Texas, and a PhD from the Utah State University. Professor Ahmed has more than 100 scholarly publications and is the President, Academy for Global Business Advancement, Editor-in-Chief, Journal for Global Business Advancement and Editor-in Chief, Journal for International Business and Entrepreneurship Development. He was awarded a Doctor of Literature (D.Litt) degree in 1997 by the Aligarh Muslim University of India in recognition of his scholarship in Business Administration. Latifa M. Algaoud is Director of Human and Financial Resources, Ministry of Finance, Manama, Bahrain. Previously she held the position of Director of Administration and Finance in the Ministry of Finance and National Economy, Bahrain. She has a Bachelor of Business Administration (International Trade) from the University of Hellwan, Cairo, Egypt and an MBA in Financial Studies from the University of Nottingham, England. Miss Algaoud is the joint author (with M.K. Lewis) of several journal articles on Islamic banking and finance and the volume Islamic Banking (Edward Elgar, 2001). Simon Archer is Professor of Financial Management at the University of Surrey, England. Previously, he was Midland Bank Professor of Financial Sector Accounting at the University of Wales, Bangor. He studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford. He then qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Arthur Andersen in London, and then moved to Price Waterhouse in Paris, where he became partner in charge of Management Consultancy Services in France and Scandinavia. Professor Archer is now Consultant at the Islamic Financial Services Board, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He is the author (with Rifaat Karim) of Islamic Finance: Innovation and Growth (Euromoney Institutional Investor, 2002). He has published many academic papers on international accounting and on accounting and finance issues in Islamic financial institutions. ix
Slide 10: x Handbook of Islamic banking Ricardo Baba is Associate Professor in the School of International Business and Finance, University of Malaysia Sabah, Labuan International Campus. He holds a BBA degree in Management from Ohio University, an MBA degree in Marketing and International Business from the University of New Haven, and a DBA degree in International Banking from the University of South Australia. He has worked for the Central Bank of Malaysia, Standard Chartered Bank and Rabobank Nederland, and has conducted research on offshore financial centres and offshore banking. Dr Baba is the author of Introduction to Offshore Banking (Pearson/Prentice-Hall, 2005). Mohd Ma’sum Billah is Professor of Islamic Applied Finance and Dean, Faculty of Islamic Finance, University of Camden, USA (Malaysian Center). Dr Billah is the Founder, Global Center for Applied Islamic Finance and Group Chairman, KProfessional Development Academy, Malaysia. Author of Manual of Principles and Practices of Takaful and Re-Takaful (International Islamic University Malaysia), he is an Islamic Corporate Advisor on shari’a compliance, investment, corporate mu’amalat and e-Commerce, and a variety of Islamic financial instruments and applications. Kym Brown is Assistant Lecturer in Banking at Monash University, Australia. Previously she was employed by Deakin University and worked in a number of small businesses. Her research interests predominantly relate to banking and development of financial systems, particularly in developing markets. This includes the performance of Asian and Islamic banks. Kym is a Certified Public Accountant and has an Honours degree in Commerce, a Graduate Diploma in Management Information Systems, and is completing a PhD on Asian bank efficiency. She has over ten publications. M. Umer Chapra is Research Advisor at the Islamic Research and Training Institute (IRTI) of the Islamic Development Bank. Dr Chapra joined IRTI after retiring as Senior Economic Advisor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency. He received the Doctor’s degree in Economics in 1961 from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. He has made seminal contributions to Islamic economics and finance over more than three decades and has lectured widely on various aspects of Islam and Islamic economics at a number of academic institutions in different countries. Dr Chapra is a member of the Technical Committee of the Islamic Financial Services Board and has received a number of awards, including the Islamic Development Bank Award for Islamic Economics, and the prestigious King Faysal International Award for Islamic Studies, both in 1989. Masudul Alam Choudhury is Professor of Economics at the School of Business, University College of Cape Breton, Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada. Professor Choudhury is the International Chair of the Postgraduate Program in Islamic Economics and Finance at Trisakti University Jakarta, Indonesia and is Director-General of the Center of Comparative Political Economy in the International Islamic University, Chittagong, Bangladesh. He has published widely and his most recent books are An Advanced Exposition of Islamic Economics and Finance (with M.Z. Hoque) (Edwin Mellen Press, 2004); The Islamic World-System, a Study in Polity–Market Interaction (RoutledgeCurzon, 2004).
Slide 11: Contributors xi Humayon A. Dar is the Vice-President of Dar al Istithmar, UK, a London-based subsidiary of Deutsche Bank and a global think-tank for Islamic finance. Previously he was a lecturer at the Department of Economics at Loughborough University and an Assistant Professor and Head of the Economics Department at the Lahore College of Arts and Sciences, a Visiting Lecturer at the Imperial College of Business Studies, Lahore and also at the Markfield Institute of Higher Education. Dr Dar holds a BSc and MSc in economics from the International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan, and received an M.Phil in 1992 and a PhD in 1997 from the University of Cambridge, England. He has published widely in Islamic banking and finance. Said M. Elfakhani is Professor of Finance and Associate Dean, Olayan School of Business at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. He has a BBA from the Lebanese University, an MBA from the University of Texas at Arlington, and an MSc and PhD in Finance from the University of Texas at Dallas. Previously he taught for ten years at the University of Saskatchewan, and has held visiting appointments at Indiana State University and King Fahad University of Petroleum and Minerals, Saudi Arabia. Dr Elfakhani has published 23 academic papers in international refereed journals, 12 papers in international proceedings, and presented 30 academic papers in international conferences held in the US, Europe and worldwide. He is an International Scholar in Finance with the Organization of Arab Academic Leaders for the Advancement of Business and Economic Knowledge. Mahmoud A. El-Gamal is Professor of Economics and Statistics at Rice University, where he holds the endowed Chair in Islamic Economics, Finance and Management. Prior to joining Rice University, he had been Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Assistant Professor at Caltech and the University of Rochester. He also served in the Middle East Department of the IMF (1995–6), and was the first Scholar in Residence on Islamic Finance at the US Department of Treasury (2004). He has published extensively in the areas of econometrics, finance, experimental economics, and Islamic law and finance. Sam R. Hakim is Adjunct Professor of Finance at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. He is a Vice President of Risk Management at Energetix LLP, an energy company in Los Angeles CA. Previously he was Director of Risk Control at Williams, an oil and gas company in Houston. Dr Hakim was also financial economist at Federal Home Loan Bank in Washington, DC. Between 1989 and 1998 Dr Hakim was an Associate Professor of Finance and Banking at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He is an Ayres fellow with the American Bankers Association in Washington, DC and author of over 40 articles and publications. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Southern California. M. Kabir Hassan is a tenured Professor in the Department of Economics and Finance at the University of New Orleans, Louisiana, USA and currently holds a Visiting Research Professorship at Drexel University in Pennsylvania, USA. He is editor of The Global Journal of Finance and Economics. Dr Hassan has edited and published many books, along with articles in refereed academic journals, and is co-editor (with M.K. Lewis) of
Slide 12: xii Handbook of Islamic banking Islamic Finance, The International Library of Critical Writings in Economics (Edward Elgar, 2007). A frequent traveller, Dr Hassan gives lectures and workshops in the US and abroad, and has presented over 100 research papers at professional conferences. Munawar Iqbal is Chief of Research, Islamic Banking and Finance, Islamic Development Bank. He has worked as Senior Research Economist, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, Islamabad; Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, International Islamic University, Islamabad; Director, International Institute of Islamic Economics, Islamabad, and Economic Adviser, Al-Rajhi Banking and Investment Corporation, Saudi Arabia. Dr Iqbal holds an MA (Economics) degree from McMaster University and a PhD from Simon Fraser University, Canada. His recent publications include Islamic Banking and Finance: Current Developments in Theory and Practice (Islamic Foundation, 2001), Financing Public Expenditure: An Islamic Perspective, co-authored (IRTI 2004), Thirty Years of Islamic Banking: History, Performance and Prospects, co-authored (Palgrave Macmillan, USA, 2005), Banking and Financial Systems in the Arab World, 2005, co-authored (Palgrave Macmillan, USA, 2005), Islamic Finance and Economic Development, co-edited (Palgrave Macmillan, USA, 2005), Financial Engineering and Islamic Contracts, co-edited (Palgrave Macmillan, USA, 2005). Monzer Kahf is Professor of Islamic Economics and Banking in the graduate programme of Islamic economics and banking, School of Shari’ah, Yarmouk University, Jordan. Previously he held the posts of Senior Research Economist and Head of Research Division of the Islamic Research and Training Institute of the Islamic Development Bank, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and Director of Finance, Islamic Society of North America, Plainfield, Indiana. Dr Kahf has a BA (Business), University of Damascus, Syria, a PhD in Economics from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, and is a Certified Public Accountant in Syria. He is the author of more than 50 articles and 25 books and booklets on Awqaf, Zakah, Islamic finance and banking and other areas of Islamic economics, and was awarded the IDB Prize for Islamic Economics in 2001. Rifaat Ahmed Abdel Karim is Secretary-General of the Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Previously he was the Secretary-General of the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI), Manama, Bahrain. Professor Karim is Honorary Professor in the Faculty of Business and Economics at Monash University, Australia, and is currently a member of the Standards Advisory Council of the International Accounting Standards Board, and a member of the Consultative Advisory Group of the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board. He has published extensively on accounting, ethics and Islamic finance. M. Fahim Khan is Chief, Islamic Economics, Cooperation and Development Division, the Islamic Research and Training Institute, Islamic Development Bank. Previously he was Deputy Chief of the Ministry of Planning, Government of Pakistan, Professor and Director in the International Institute of Islamic Economics, International Islamic University, Islamabad and was seconded to the State Bank of Pakistan as Advisor on Transformation of the Financial System. Dr Khan holds a BA and MA (Statistics) from Punjab University, Pakistan, and an MA and PhD in Economics from Boston University,
Slide 13: Contributors xiii USA. He has over 15 articles in refereed journals, and he has published or edited ten books on Islamic economics, banking and finance, including Money and Banking in Islam, Fiscal Policy and Resource Allocation in Islam, jointly edited with Ziauddin Ahmed and Munawar Iqbal, and Essays in Islamic Economics published by the Islamic Foundation, Leicester, UK. Tariqullah Khan is currently Senior Economist and officiating Chief, Islamic Banking and Finance Division at Islamic Research and Training Institute (IRTI), the Islamic Development Bank. He is also a member of the Risk Management Working Group of the Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB), and Coordinator of the Malaysian Ten-Year Master Plan for the Islamic Financial Services Industry. Before joining IRTI he held faculty positions in universities in Pakistan. He holds an MA (Economics) degree from the University of Karachi, Pakistan, and a PhD degree from Loughborough University, England. His recent publications include Islamic Financial Architecture: Risk Management and Financial Stability (2005) co-edited, Islamic Financial Engineering (2005) coedited, and Financing Public Expenditure: An Islamic Perspective (2004). Mervyn K. Lewis is Professor of Banking and Finance, University of South Australia. Previously he was Midland Bank Professor of Money and Banking at the University of Nottingham, a Consultant to the Australian Financial System Inquiry, and Visiting Scholar at the Bank of England. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, Canberra in 1986. Professor Lewis has authored or co-authored 18 books and over one hundred articles or chapters. The latest volume, edited with Kabir Hassan, is Islamic Finance (Edward Elgar, 2007). Other recent co-authored books include Islamic Banking (Edward Elgar, 2001), Public Private Partnerships (Edward Elgar, 2004), The Economics of Public Private Partnerships (Edward Elgar, 2005) and Reforming China’s state-owned enterprises and banks (Edward Elgar, 2006). Professor Lewis is a foundation member of the Australian Research Council Islam Node Network. Michael J.T. McMillen is a Partner with the law firm of Dechert LLP and works in the firm’s New York, London and Philadelphia offices. He also teaches Islamic finance at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. His law practice focuses primarily on Islamic finance and international and domestic project finance, leasing and structured finance. He has been active in the Islamic finance field since 1996 and in the project finance field since 1985. Mr McMillen has developed numerous innovative Islamic finance structures and products, and he also works closely with the Islamic Financial Services Board and the International Swaps and Derivatives Association on a broad range of global Islamic finance initiatives. His project finance experience includes some of the largest and most innovative project financings in the world, primarily in the electricity, petrochemical, mining and infrastructure sectors. Mr McMillen received a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Wisconsin in 1972, his Juris Doctor from the University of Wisconsin School of Law in 1976, and his Doctor of Medicine from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1983. Abbas Mirakhor is the Executive Director for Afghanistan, Algeria, Ghana, Islamic Republic of Iran, Morocco, Pakistan and Tunisia at the International Monetary Fund,
Slide 14: xiv Handbook of Islamic banking Washington, DC. Born in Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran, Dr Mirakhor attended Kansas State University where he received his PhD in economics in 1969. He has authored a large number of articles, books, publications and conference proceedings, and is the co-editor of Essays on Iqtisad: Islamic Approach to Economic Problems (1989), and Theoretical Studies in Islamic Banking and Finance (1987). Dr Mirakhor has received several awards, including the Islamic Development Bank Annual Prize for Research in Islamic Economics, shared with Mohsin Khan in 2003. Volker Nienhaus is President of the University of Marburg, Germany, and Honorary Professor of the University of Bochum, and a member of academic advisory committees of the German Orient-Foundation, the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development and the Federal Agency for Civic Education. Previously he held Chairs in economics at the German universities of Trier and Bochum. He has had a longstanding interest in Islamic economics and finance. Other areas of interest are service sector economics, economic systems, transformation economics and international economics. Mohammed Obaidullah is Associate Professor at the Islamic Economics Research Center, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Previously he worked at the International Islamic University Malaysia and the Xavier Institute of Management, India. Dr Obaidullah is the Editor of the International Journal of Islamic Financial Services and IBF Review. He is the Founder Director of IBF Net: The Islamic Business and Finance Network, and is Secretary-General of the International Association of Islamic Economics (IAIE). Dr Obaidullah is the author of Indian Stock Markets: Theories and Evidence (Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India, Hyderabad) and has published in a wide range of refereed journals. His areas of interest include Islamic finance, security markets and development finance. Ridha Saadallah is Professor of Economics at the University of Sfax in Tunisia. Previously he worked with the Islamic Research and Training Institute of the Islamic Development Bank, Jeddah for a number of years before moving to academia. Dr Saadallah has published widely in Islamic economics, banking and finance. His research monograph Financing Trade in an Islamic Economy was published by the Islamic Research Training Institute in 1999. Yusuf M. Sidani is a member of the faculty at the Suliman S. Olayan School of Business at the American University of Beirut. His earlier appointments include the Lebanese University (School of Economic Sciences and Business Administration), and the University of Armenia. Dr Sidani has over 30 contributions to academic and professional journals, academic and professional conferences and book chapters, and has been involved in managerial and financial education, training and consulting for companies and individuals in the private and the public sectors in various areas of the Middle East. He is an active member of the Lebanese Accounting and Auditing Corporate Governance Taskforce and the Lebanese Association of Certified Public Accountants. Michael Skully is Professor of Banking at Monash University, Victoria, Australia. Prior to becoming an academic, he worked in the investment banking industry and in corporate
Slide 15: Contributors xv finance with General Electric. Professor Skully is a fellow of CPA Australia and the Australasian Institute of Banking and Finance, an associate of the Securities Institute of Australia, a director and vice president of the Asia Pacific Finance Association and a member of the Victorian government’s Finance Industry Consultative Committee. He has published widely in the areas of financial institutions and corporate finance and his books include Merchant Banking in Australia, co-author of Management of Financial Institutions, and general editor of the Handbook of Australian Corporate Finance. Professor Skully has a longstanding research interest in Islamic banking and is a foundation member of Australia’s Islam Node Network of academic researchers. Seif El-Din Tag El-Din is Associate Professor at the Markfield Institute of Higher Education, UK. He is editor of the Review of Islamic Economics, and a member of the Advisory Board, Journal of Islamic Studies. Previously he worked for the Tadamum Islamic Bank, Khartoum, as lecturer at Khartoum University, Centre of Research in Islamic Economics, and lecturer at King Abdul Azziz University, Jeddah, Ministry of Planning, Riyadh, Al-Barakah Development and Investment Company and the National Management Consultancy Centre, Jeddah. Dr Tag El-Din has a BSc (Hons), Khartoum University, an MSc, Glasgow University and PhD, Edinburgh University. Dr Tag El-Din has published many research papers in refereed journals on Islamic economics and finance. Rodney Wilson is Professor of Economics and Director of Postgraduate Studies, School of Government and International Affairs, the University of Durham. He currently chairs the academic committee of the Institute of Islamic Banking and Insurance in London and has acted as Director for courses in Islamic finance for Euromoney Training in London and Singapore, the Financial Training Company of Singapore and the Institute of Banking Studies in Kuwait. Professor Wilson’s recent academic publications include The Politics of Islamic Finance (edited with Clement Henry), Edinburgh University Press and Columbia University Press, 2004; and Economic Development in Saudi Arabia (Routledge/Curzon, 2004). His latest book, edited with Munawar Iqbal, is Islamic Perspectives on Wealth Creation (Edinburgh University Press, 2005). Iqbal Zaidi is Senior Advisor to the Executive Director, International Monetary Fund. Dr Zaidi has worked for the IMF for over 25 years, including being Resident Representative in Ghana (1992–4) and Kyrgyzstan (1999–2001), and has participated in numerous IMF missions. He was an Advisor to the Governor of the State Bank of Pakistan (1995–7), in which capacity he served on the Open Market Operations Committee of the State Bank and was also a member of the High Level Task Force for Bank Restructuring set up by the Government of Pakistan. Dr Zaidi graduated magna cum laude with a BA Honours in Economics from Haverford College, and an MA and PhD in Economics from Princeton University. He has published widely in professional journals. Imad J. Zbib is Chairman of the Management, Marketing and Entrepreneurship Track in the Olayan School of Business at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. He obtained his MSc in Managerial and Cost Accounting in 1986 and a PhD in Operations Management from the University of North Texas in 1991. Dr Zbib has authored and
Slide 16: xvi Handbook of Islamic banking co-authored over 40 articles in refereed journals, books and conference proceedings. He is a frequent speaker and consultant on such issues as Strategic Executive Leadership, Strategic Management, Strategic Marketing, International Business and Supply Chain Management, and holds the position of Assistant Vice President for Regional External Programs at the American University of Beirut.
Slide 17: Glossary This section explains some Arabic words and terms occurring in the volume. Arbun is a non-refundable deposit to secure the right to cancel or proceed with a sale during a certain period of time. Bai’al-dayn means the sale of debt or a liability at a discount or negotiated price. Bai’al-inah is a contract that involves the sale and buy back of assets by a seller. Bai bi-thamin ajil is deferred payment sale by instalments. Bai’muajjal is deferred payment sale. Bai’salam is pre-paid purchase. Bay (bai) is a comprehensive term that applies to sale transactions, exchange. Fiqh is Islamic jurisprudence, the science of religious law, which is the interpretation of the Sacred Law, shari’a. Gharar is uncertainty, speculation. Hadith (plural ahadith) is the technical term for the source related to the sunna, the sayings – and doings – of the Prophet, his traditions. Halal means permitted according to shari’a. Haram means forbidden according to shari’a. Hiyal (plural of hila) are ‘permissions’ or legal manipulations, evasions. Ijara contract is a leasing contract. Ijara wa iqtina is a lease-purchase contract, whereby the client has the option of purchasing the item. Ijma means consensus among jurists based on the Holy Qur’an and sunna, and one of the four sources of law in Sunni Islam. Ijtihad means the act of independent reasoning by a qualified jurist in order to reach new legal rules. Islam is submission or surrender to the will of God. Istijrar refers to a sale in which an asset is supplied on a continuing basis at an agreed price payable at a future date. Istisnaa is a contract to manufacture. Ju’alah is the stipulated price (commission) for performing any service. Kafala is a contract of guarantee or taking of responsibility for a liability provided by a guarantor, kafeel. Maysir means gambling, from a pre-Islamic game of hazard. Mudaraba contract is a trustee financing contract, where one party, the financier, entrusts funds to the other party, the entrepreneur, for undertaking an activity. Mudarib means an entrepreneur or a manager of a mudaraba project. Murabaha is resale with a stated profit; for example the bank purchases a certain asset and sells it to the client on the basis of a cost plus mark-up profit principle. Musharaka contract is an equity participation contract, whereby two or more partners contribute with funds to carry out an investment. Muslim is one who professes the faith of Islam or is born to a Muslim family. xvii
Slide 18: xviii Handbook of Islamic banking Nisab is the minimum acceptable standard of living. Qard hasan is a benevolent loan (interest-free). Qiyas means analogical deduction. Qur’an is the Holy Book, the revealed word of God, followed by all Muslims. Rabb al-mal refers to the owner of capital or financier in a mudaraba partnership agreement (also sahib al-mal). Riba is literally ‘excess’ or ‘increase’, and covers both interest and usury. Shari’a is Islamic religious law derived from the Holy Qur’an and the sunna. Shirkah (or sharika) is a society or partnership. Sukuk is a freely tradeable Islamic participation certificate based on the ownership and exchange of an approved asset. Sunna is a source of information concerning the practices of the Prophet Muhammad and his Companions, and is the second most authoritative source of Islamic law. Sura (pl. surat) is a chapter of the Holy Qur’an. There are 114 suras of varying length and in all references to the Holy Qur’an (for example 30:39) the first number refers to the sura and the second to the aya or verse. Tabarru means charity or donation. In takaful, it is a voluntary pooled fund for the benefit of all members. Takaful refers to mutual support which is the basis of the concept of insurance or solidarity among Muslims. Ulama are the learned class, especially those learned in religious matters. Umma means the community; the body of Muslims. Wadia means safe custody or deposit. Wakala involves a contract of agency on a fee-for-services basis with an agent, wakil. Waqf is a trust or pious foundation. Zakat is a religious levy or almsgiving as required in the Holy Qur’an and is one of the five pillars of Islam.
Slide 19: 1 Islamic banking: an introduction and overview M. Kabir Hassan and Mervyn K. Lewis Introduction From a situation nearly 30 years ago when it was virtually unknown, Islamic banking has expanded to become a distinctive and fast growing segment of the international banking and capital markets. There are well over 200 Islamic banks operating in over 70 countries comprising most of the Muslim world and many Western countries. Not included in these figures are the 50 Islamic insurance (takaful) companies operating in 22 countries, Islamic investment houses, mutual funds, leasing companies and commodity trading companies. Also excluded are the very largest Islamic banks engaged at a multilateral level. To these numbers must be added the many hundreds of small Islamic financial institutions such as rural and urban cooperative credit societies, Islamic welfare societies and financial associations operating at a local level and dealing with rural entities, small business firms and individual households. Many people are interested in the phenomenon of Islamic banking and in the question of how it differs from conventional banking, yet, despite the expansion over the last 30 years, Islamic banking remains poorly understood in many parts of the Muslim world and continues to be a mystery in much of the West. Our aim in this volume is to provide a succinct analysis of the workings of Islamic banking and finance, accessible to a wide range of readers. There is now a considerable amount of research on the topic and, in what can be considered as a companion to this volume, we have collected together some of the most significant previously published articles on the subject covering the last four decades (Hassan and Lewis, 2007). Inevitably, however, there were large gaps in the coverage of topics (notably in the treatment of operational efficiency, marketing, project finance, risk management, mutual funds, the stock market, government financing, multilateral institutions and financial centres) and a narrow number of themes were pursued in these journal articles written, in most cases, for specialist researchers in the field. This volume seeks to bring the research agenda and the main issues on Islamic banking before a wider audience. For this reason we invited leading scholars to write chapters on various aspects of Islamic banking and report on the current state of play, and the debates, involved. The essays aim to provide a clearly accessible source of reference material on current practice and research. Before introducing the individual contributions, a word of explanation is needed about the title. When the subject matter first began to be written about, it was usual to use the terms ‘Islamic banks’ and ‘Islamic banking’. Nowadays, it has become more commonplace to talk of Islamic finance and Islamic financial institutions, reflecting in part the shift – evident in Western markets as well as Islamic ones – away from what used to be banking activities to financing activities more generally, previously carried out by investment companies and assorted non-banking intermediaries. Nevertheless, so long as this wider agenda is recognized, we prefer the simplicity of the original terms. 1
Slide 20: 2 Handbook of Islamic banking Foundations of Islamic banking An Islamic banking and financial system exists to provide a variety of religiously acceptable financial services to the Muslim communities. In addition to this special function, the banking and financial institutions, like all other aspects of Islamic society, are expected to ‘contribute richly to the achievement of the major socio-economic goals of Islam’ (Chapra, 1985, p. 34). The most important of these are economic well-being with full employment and a high rate of economic growth, socioeconomic justice and an equitable distribution of income and wealth, stability in the value of money, and the mobilization and investment of savings for economic development in such a way that a just (profitsharing) return is ensured to all parties involved. Perhaps the religious dimension should be presented as a further explicit goal, in the sense that the opportunity to conduct religiously legitimate financial operations has a value far beyond that of the mode of the financial operation itself. In Chapter 2, Masudul Choudhury notes that Islamic banks have mushroomed under an Islamization agenda, but the system has not developed a comprehensive vision of an interest-free system, nor has it mobilized financial resources for enhancing social wellbeing by promoting economic development along Islamic lines. These omissions, he argues, are shared more generally by Islamic economic thinking and social thought which has produced no truly Qur’anic worldview and has failed to understand the dynamics of Islamic transformation within an equitable and participatory framework. Choudhury comes to this conclusion after reviewing the social theory developed from the early years of Islam to the present day. In advocating the rediscovery of a worldview founded on the doctrine of Tawhid (the oneness of God) as enunciated by the Holy Qur’an and sunna, Choudhury envisages a social wellbeing function for Islamic banks in terms of social security, protection of individual rights and resource mobilization in keeping with the Islamic faith. Financial systems based in Islamic tenets are dedicated to the elimination of the payment and receipt of interest in all forms. It is this taboo that makes Islamic banks and other financial institutions different in principle from their Western counterparts. The fundamental sources of Islam are the Holy Qur’an and the sunna, a term which in Ancient Arabia meant ‘ancestral precedent’ or the ‘custom of the tribe’, but which is now synonymous with the teachings and traditions of the Prophet Muhammad as transmitted by the relators of authentic tradition. Both of these sources treat interest as an act of exploitation and injustice and as such it is inconsistent with Islamic notions of fairness and property rights. Islamic banking thus derives its specific raison d’être from the fact that there is no place for the institution of interest in the Islamic order. Some scholars have put forward economic reasons to explain why interest is banned in Islam. Anwar Iqbal Qureshi ([1946] 1991) believes that it is not necessary to offer intellectual arguments in favour of the Qur’anic injunction against riba. The real question, however, is not about riba but about the definition of riba. Latifa Algaoud and Mervyn Lewis in Chapter 3 examine the nature of riba, distinguishing between riba that relates to loans and riba that involves trade, before going on to consider the divergent positions taken by traditionalists and modernists on the definition of riba. They also point out that the Islamic critique is based on more than the prohibition on interest, even if we overlook the broader social charter recommended by Choudhury and others. There is also the prohibition in Islam of maysir (gambling, speculation) and gharar (unreasonable
Slide 21: Islamic banking: an introduction and overview 3 uncertainty), the need to ensure that investment be undertaken on the basis of halal (permitted) activities, and the requirement to benefit society through the collection of zakat (almsgiving) overseen by a special religious supervisory board. This rejection of interest by Islam poses the question of what replaces the interest rate mechanism in an Islamic framework. If the paying and receiving of interest is prohibited, how do Islamic banks operate? Here PLS comes in, substituting profit-and-loss-sharing for interest as a method of resource allocation. Although a large number of different contracts feature in Islamic financing, certain types of transaction are central: trustee finance (mudaraba), equity participation (musharaka) and ‘mark-up’ methods. Some of these profit-sharing arrangements such as mudaraba and musharaka almost certainly pre-date the genesis of Islam. Business partnerships based on what was in essence the mudaraba concept coexisted in the pre-Islamic Middle East along with interest loans as a means of financing economic activities (Crone, 1987; Kazarian, 1991; Cizaka, 1995). Following the birth of Islam, interest-based financial transactions were forbidden and all finance had to be conducted on a profit-sharing basis. The business partnership technique, utilizing the mudaraba principle, was employed by the Prophet Muhammad himself when acting as agent (mudarib) for his wife Khadija, while his second successor Umar ibin al-Khattab invested the money of orphans with merchants engaged in trade between Medina and Iraq. Simple profit-sharing business partnerships of this type continued in virtually unchanged form over the centuries, but they did not develop into vehicles for large-scale investment involving the collection of large amounts of funds from large numbers of individual savers. This development did not happen until the growth of Islamic financial institutions. This leads us to Chapter 4, by Abbas Mirakhor and Iqbal Zaidi which provides an account of both the traditional financial instruments, mudaraba, musharaka and markup (murabaha, ijara, salam, bai bi-thamin ajil, istisnaa), along with the newly developed sukuks. Mirakhor and Zaidi explain in detail the features that make these instruments acceptable from an Islamic viewpoint, and the implications which follow from an agency theory perspective for the contractual relationships involved. They then consider some practical issues involved in the development of Islamic structured finance in the form of asset-backed securities, covered bonds, sukuks and collateralized securitization. Finally, the authors review the future of the profit-and-loss sharing principle in the light of these innovative financing arrangements. Following on from these analyses of the economic and social principles underlying Islamic financing, the nature of the Islamic critique of conventional financial systems, and the present-day Islamic alternative, the last chapter in this section brings a different perspective to the issues, for Islam is not the only (or indeed the first) religion to prohibit usury (interest). In Ancient India, laws based on the Veda, the oldest scriptures of Hinduism, condemned usury as a major sin and restricted the operation of interest rates (Gopal, 1935; Rangaswami, 1927). In Judaism, the Torah (the Hebrew name of the Law of Moses or the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament) prohibited usury amongst the Jews, while at least one authority sees in the Talmud (the Oral Law which supplements the Written Scriptures for orthodox Jews) a consistent bias against ‘the appearance of usury or profit’ (Neusner, 1990). Under Christianity, prohibitions or severe restrictions upon usury operated for over 1400 years, but gradually the Christian Church bowed to the pressures of reformist theologians and the needs of commerce and came to see only exorbitant interest as usurious.
Slide 22: 4 Handbook of Islamic banking The Islamic ban on usury rests on the unparalleled authority of the Holy Qur’an in which the prohibition is frequently and clearly enunciated. What was the authority for the Christian opposition to usury? What rationale was provided by the clerical authorities? How do these compare with those of Islamic jurists? How was the Christian ban enforced? Was it honoured more in the breach than in the practice? What devices were used to avoid the ban? Why did the Christian Church shift its stand on the nature of usury? These are the questions examined in Chapter 5 by Mervyn Lewis. The answers provided to these questions shed new light on the achievements of Islamic banking methods, while at the same time revealing a number of interesting parallels with present-day Islamic financing techniques. The author argues that Islam has succeeded in sustaining its prohibition on interest, where Christianity relented, because of the efforts made by Islamic bankers and jurists to fashion instruments that conform to shari’a principles. Nevertheless, a question mark still exists, because there are many within the Islamic community and outside who consider that some of the techniques (such as mark-up and sukuks) are more successful in meeting the letter of the law, rather than the spirit, of the Qur’anic injunctions on riba. Chapters by Chapra and Nienhaus take up this point, and we return to it at the end of this chapter. Operations of Islamic banks This section of the volume examines a number of aspects of the workings of Islamic banks. In Chapter 6, Humayon Dar considers incentive compatibility problems. First, he examines the traditional contracts offered by Islamic banks which are divided into fixed return (murabaha, ijira, salam, istisnaa and so on) and variable return methods (mudaraba and musharaka). Incentive compatibility relates to the in-built inducements that exist for the transacting parties to honour the terms of the contract. This is an area in which there are conflicting views (Khan, 1985, 1987; Ahmed, 1989; Presley and Sessions, 1994). Dar argues that the benefits of improved productivity from the variable-return modes of financing are likely to be outweighed by the moral hazard and adverse selection problems vis-à-vis the fixed-return contracts, perhaps explaining the dominance of the latter in bank portfolios. However, while incentive compatibility is relevant for all forms of financing, it is particularly so for modern markets based on derivatives such as options, futures and forward contracts that exceed, on some measures, the markets in the underlying assets (Stulz, 2004). In the remainder of his chapter, Dar focuses on the incentive structures of the Islamic methods of financial engineering based on arbun, bai’ salam and istijrar. Dar observes that the relative dearness of Islamic financial products has proved to be a disincentive to their use in comparison with the less expensive conventional banking products. To some extent this difference may be a result of the incentive compatibility problems, necessitating larger outlays on monitoring costs. However, it is also inseparable from the question of the operational efficiency of Islamic banks, examined in Chapter 7 by Kym Brown, M. Kabir Hassan and Michael Skully. What exactly is operational efficiency and how is it measured? This is the first issue to be addressed but it does not beg an easy answer. There is no single measure of operating performance or of efficiency, and the small number of Islamic banks in each country means other benchmarks are needed. A number of approaches have been followed in the literature, and it is difficult to ascertain to what extent different research findings reflect differences in research methodology and data. Nevertheless, where a direct comparison is possible, it would seem that Islamic
Slide 23: Islamic banking: an introduction and overview 5 banks compare favourably in terms of profitability measures vis-à-vis conventional banks, despite the fact that their social charter may lead them into areas (such as qard hasan loans) and responsibilities (such as zakat) that conflict with profit maximization. In terms of efficiency, there would seem to be some potential to cut operating costs and exploit scale economics. A feature of the chapter is the extensive data provided of the structure of Islamic bank activities. Islamic financial products need to be more than offered to customers, they need to be actively marketed. For those Islamic banks operating in fully Islamicized financial systems this may not be needed. For those in mixed financial systems it is certainly the case. When these banks were initially established, they relied heavily on their religious appeal to gain deposits. This emphasis has continued. To give one example, Saeed (1995) reports that the Faisal Islamic Bank of Egypt (FIBE) is actively involved in attracting Muslims, particularly those who believe in the unlawfulness of interest, to its deposit mobilization schemes. To attract such customers in an increasingly competitive financial environment, FIBE utilizes several means: ● ● ● ● ● Encouraging leading ‘ulama (religious scholars) to propagate the prohibition of interest. Emphasizing its Islamic credentials by means of the collection and distribution of zakat. Convening seminars and conferences to propagate the merits of Islamic banking. Offering modern banking facilities such as automatic teller machines and fast banking services by means of installing the latest computer technology in banking operations. Giving depositors a return comparable to that given to the depositors of traditional banks. While all of these factors are relevant, the last two are critical. The Islamic financial market is no longer in its infancy, and an Islamic bank cannot take its clients for granted. There are many institutions, including Western banks, competing with the original Islamic banks by means of Islamic ‘windows’, and the general lesson in financial, as in other, markets is that profit spreads and profit margins fall as new financial institutions enter the market. In this competitive milieu, a clearly targeted marketing strategy is important. Few banks can be all things to all people. Islamic banks must use market research to identify their market segments and reach them with innovative products. This is the message of Chapter 8, on the marketing of Islamic financial services by Elfakhani, Zbib and Ahmed. Corporate governance is an important issue for all corporations, but especially so for an Islamic bank. This is the topic of Chapter 9, by Volker Nienhaus. Normally, corporate governance is seen as revolving around the conflict of interest between shareholders and management. When corporate governance is discussed in the context of banking, depositors are usually brought into the picture because of the fact that banks are so highly geared and it is they (depositors) who can suffer, along with shareholders, when a bank fails. With an Islamic bank there is an extra dimension arising from its religious charter, and an additional layer of governance stemming from the role of the Shar’ia Supervisory Board (SSB) that monitors its adherence to Islamic principles.
Slide 24: 6 Handbook of Islamic banking Nienhaus makes the very interesting observation that the behaviour of most SSBs has altered markedly over the years. When the system of shari’a supervision was first established in the formative period of Islamic banking, the shari’a scholars were thought to be overcautious, and perhaps even obstructive, by the bankers. Nowadays, they have allowed, as permissible, instruments that would perhaps have been seen earlier as hiyal, legal fictions, obeying only the letter of the law. The development of the sukuk is an example that comes readily to mind. Nienhaus wonders why the change from overly-conservative to permissive has taken place. He advances reasons that essentially parallel the ‘capture’ theory of regulation (Stigler, 1971). If the members of the SSB wish to be reappointed and continue their SSB membership, it is in their interest to foster good relations with the management of the Islamic bank, and give the managers the benefit of the doubt when approving new product innovations, blurring the distinctiveness (and ideological purity) of the Islamic banking system. To this end, Nienhaus recommends the establishment of a National Shari’a Board for each country that would be independent of management. It is now recognized that risk management is an indispensable part of good corporate governance, and most major corporations today will have a Board committee to oversee internal risk management systems. For a bank, this function is vital, for the management of risks lies at the heart of banking activities. Risk management is the topic of Chapter 10, by Habib Ahmed and Tariqullah Khan, who approach the issue properly in an orderly and systematic manner. The authors first examine the special risk characteristics of Islamic banking operations, identifying the unique credit risks, market risks, liquidity risks, fiduciary and other risks faced by Islamic bankers. They then consider the risk mitigation and risk transfer options open to Islamic banks. Conventional banks make much use of derivatives for these purposes, but many of these instruments need extensive modification or re-engineering to be suitable for Islamic financial institutions. Finally, the authors provide an analysis of capital adequacy requirements, and expected loss recognition for the Islamic institutions. Instruments and markets So far, in the chapters reviewed, the volume has examined the religious underpinnings of Islamic finance and the general operations of Islamic banks. The focus in this part of the book is a range of specialist applications of the general principles and practices. Management of liquidity has traditionally been a problem area for Islamic financial institutions. Conventional banks use a variety of methods to manage liquidity. Like any enterprise, banks use asset and liability management techniques to manage cash flows on both sides of the balance sheet, revolving around the repricing and duration of assets and liabilities (Lewis, 1992a, provides an overview of the measures employed). However, it is inevitable that imbalances will arise, and banks make extensive use of two markets in these circumstances. One is the secondary market for debt instruments where bills and bonds can be readily bought and sold. The other is the inter-bank market where banks lend and borrow at interest on an overnight or longer-term basis. Together these venues constitute what is known as the ‘call money market’ (Lewis, 1992b). For many years Islamic banks were hampered in liquidity management by the absence of an equivalent infrastructure. Islamic law has restrictions on the sale of debt that inhibit shari’a acceptable secondary markets, while the institutional framework for a money market was undeveloped. That situation has changed markedly over the last decade, as is
Slide 25: Islamic banking: an introduction and overview 7 made apparent in Chapter 11, by Sam Hakim, who reviews the range of Islamic money market instruments. One major development comes from the engineering, and rapid expansion, of Islamic tradeable securities, especially sukuk. Another has come from the establishment of an Islamic inter-bank money market in Malaysia in 1994 and the number of instruments that have developed in its wake. There is also an important international dimension to these initiatives which is discussed in Chapter 23. Muslims are instructed by the Holy Qur’an to shun riba. At the same time, however, they are encouraged by the Holy Qur’an to pursue trade. However, trade invariably creates the need for trade financing. This occurs when the buyer of goods wishes to defer the payment of the goods acquired to a future date or wishes to pay for the goods by instalment over a number of future periods. Financing of trade is thus a major component of Islamic banking but, in order to adhere to the prohibition on riba, this financing cannot be done by the extension of credit at interest, and other Islamically acceptable financing techniques must be developed. These are very extensive indeed and are examined in detail in Chapter 12 by Ridha Saadallah. He outlines first the transition of the murabaha concept into an Islamic financial or credit instrument, before considering longer-term trade financing instruments employed by the banks, including the participatory instruments and the securities based on them. This leads us to the next chapter. Chapter 13 is devoted to the securitization of Islamic financial instruments. The author, Mohammed Obaidullah, points out that securitization has a relatively short history in the West but has grown spectacularly in the last five years. The chapter begins with an outline of the basic structure of structured financing, as it is now commonly called (Fender and Mitchell, 2005), which is then followed by an explanation of what is wrong with conventional securitization from an Islamic point of view. From this base, Obaidullah goes on to analyse the Islamic alternatives in theory and in practice. There are controversial fiqh issues in terms of both the form (pay-through, pass-through or asset-backed) and the underlying assets (trade receivables, leasing) that need to be resolved if the market is to expand along Western lines. At this juncture, the sukuk-al-ijara offers the most acceptable basis for a strong secondary market to evolve. Project finance is also a form of structured finance, since it involves structuring the financing, typically via a special purpose vehicle, to suit the cash flows of an underlying asset, invariably an infrastructure project. If Muslim countries follow trends elsewhere, this area seems likely to be of considerable importance in the future. For most of the postwar period, government has been the principal provider of infrastructure (at least outside the United States). Over the last decade, that position has begun to change. Faced with pressure to reduce public sector debt and, at the same time, expand and improve public facilities, governments have looked to private sector finance, and have invited private sector entities to enter into long-term contractual agreements which may take the form of construction or management of public sector infrastructure facilities by the private sector entity, or the provision of services (using infrastructure facilities) by the private sector entity to the community on behalf of a public sector body (Grimsey and Lewis, 2004). The budgetary pressures which have forced the pace in the West seem particularly strong for countries such as Pakistan, seeking greater Islamization of the financial system and looking for replacements to cover the removal of riba-based government borrowing. From the viewpoint of the private sector bodies, public–private sector financing arrangements are essentially project financing, characterized by the low capitalization of the project
Slide 26: 8 Handbook of Islamic banking vehicle company and consequently a reliance on direct revenues to pay for operating costs and cover financing while giving the desired return on risk capital. The senior financier of private finance looks to the cash flow and earnings of the project as the source of funds for repayments. The key principle for such projects is to achieve a financial structure with as little recourse as possible to the sponsors, while at the same time providing sufficient support so that the financiers are satisfied with the risks. Successful project design requires expert analysis of all of the attendant risks and then the design of contractual arrangements prior to competitive tendering that allocate risk burdens appropriately, and meet the financing needs. In the case of Islamic project financing there is an additional test that is needed, for the financing must be shari’a-compliant, and this is the topic of Chapter 14, by Michael McMillen, which gives a detailed account of the techniques and structures involved in this very complex area of Islamic financing. From the Islamic viewpoint a number of structure forms are possible, based on istisnaa, ijara, mudaraba, murabaha and sukuk financing vehicles. Thus there are a number of different ways in which the revenue stream from an Islamically acceptable project can support project financing contracts which accord with the shari’a. Such instruments would enable the large sums that are currently held mainly in short-term Islamic investments to be harnessed for investment in long-term infrastructure projects. Not only would this mobilization be valuable in resolving the problems of public sector financing in Islamic countries, it is entirely consistent with Islamic precepts. By providing basic social goods such as power, water, transport and communications services, infrastructure projects fit comfortably with the social responsibility ethos that is an essential feature of Islamic finance. In addition, limited recourse or non-recourse project financing structures are a form of asset-based financing that seem entirely consistent with Islamic law. When the complex financial structures that constitute these arrangements are stripped away, what is apparent is that project investors are sharing in the asset and cash flow risks of projects in ways that financiers are required to do under Islamic law. The final two chapters of Part III deal with different aspects of stock market investment. The stock market poses particular problems from an Islamic point of view. The basic difficulty is the absence in Islamic law of the concept of a corporation, although Muslim jurists now agree on the permissibility of trading common stocks, which are similar to the shares in a mudaraba, so long as other requirements of Islamic law are not contravened. One such constraint posed by Islamic law concerns the principles of investment. In terms of the spirit of Islam, all Muslim shareholders are expected to take a personal interest in the management of each one of the companies in which their funds are invested. They cannot be disinterested investors. The shari’a emphasizes the importance of knowing the nature of the item to be bought. To many Muslims, the anonymity of a Western stock exchange offends Islamic notions of the responsible use of wealth. The assumption that investors may not be concerned about the detailed operations of a business in which they have invested money is a source of criticism. Muslim stockholders have a responsibility to acquaint themselves with what is taking place in the organization. Another constraint is imposed on stock market investment because of the strong prohibitions on speculation in Islamically acceptable forms of financing. The question, however, is what is speculation in the context of the stock market? This is one issue considered by Seif El-Din Tag El-Din and M. Kabir Hassan in Chapter 15. The authors
Slide 27: Islamic banking: an introduction and overview 9 begin with the standard classification of transactors in the market as hedgers, arbitrategeurs and speculators. Obviously the first two categories pose no problems from a juristic position. In the case of speculators, the issue is whether the activities of speculators constitute gambling and involve undue gharar (excessive uncertainty). There is little doubt that if a liquid investment market is desired, it will be necessary to accommodate speculative activity in some form, where such activity is based on differences in opinion and beliefs. Accordingly, Tag El-Din and Hassan seek to develop a definition of excessive speculation within the context of what is called a Normative Islamic Stock Exchange (purely equity-based, free of interest and guarded against gharar). This then leads to a comparison of Islamic views on money making with those of the Aristotelian tradition. Shifting then to the empirical evidence, the authors look at the available evidence of speculation and market efficiency in the context of the behaviour of various Islamic stock market indices. Chapter 16, by Said Elfakhani, M. Kabir Hassan and Yusuf Sidani, focuses upon Islamic mutual funds. Islamic banks have long offered special investment accounts under an individual restricted mudaraba basis for high net worth individuals investing, say, $500 000 or more, as well as the unrestricted mudaraba for ordinary depositors. It was a short step to combine elements of these two investment modes in the form of closedended or open-ended unit trusts or, in the American terminology, investment companies and mutual funds. These investment vehicles can be classified according to the types of investments made by the pooled funds. These can be divided into three groups: 1. Islamic transactions. A number of long-established funds have concentrated on a variety of Islamic portfolios. Thus, for example, the Al-Tawfeek Company for the Investment of Funds and the Al-Amin Company for Securities and Investment Funds, both part of the Al-Baraka group, were established in Bahrain in 1987. Both issue shares which participate in profits and can be bought and sold. Investments are made in a number of countries such as Morocco, Mauritania, Algeria, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and comprise instruments such as lease contracts, murabahas and Islamic deposits. Specialized funds. A number of funds specialize in particular activities such as leasing whereby the Trust finances equipment, a building or an entire project for a third party against an agreed rental. For example, in June 1998, the Kuwait Finance House launched a leasing fund in the United States, to invest in industrial equipment and machinery. There are also specialized real estate and commodity funds. Equity funds. These are simply trusts, both closed and open-ended, which invest funds in stocks and shares. Those funds investing in international equities cover the world’s major stock markets. 2. 3. It is the latter type of fund which is the topic of Elfakhani, Hassan and Sidani’s chapter. In considering equity funds, the principal question from the Islamic point of view is whether investments in international equity markets are acceptable under the shari’a. There is no doubt that dealing in the supply, manufacture or service of things prohibited by Islam (haram), such as riba, pork meat, alcohol, gambling and so on cannot be acceptable. But companies which are not involved in the above haram activities could be considered acceptable. The main objection against them is that in their own internal
Slide 28: 10 Handbook of Islamic banking accounting and financial dealings they lend and borrow from riba banks and other institutions, but the fact remains that their main business operations do not involve prohibited activities. In order for the returns from such companies to quality for inclusion in the mutual fund, quoted companies are classified according to a number of screens. After removing companies with unacceptable core business activities, the remaining lists are tested by a financial-ratio ‘filter’, the purpose of which is to remove companies with an unacceptable debt ratio. Those left in the fund must then be assessed according to ‘tainted dividends’ and ‘cleansed’. Here ‘tainted dividend’ receipts relate to the portion, if any, of a dividend paid by a constituent company that has been determined to be attributable to activities that are not in accordance with shari’a principles and therefore should be donated to a proper charity or charities. However, such ‘cleansing’ cannot be counted as part of zakat obligations, but merely as a way of ensuring that investments are ethically sound. There are obvious parallels in this selection process with the Western ethical investment movement. A number of investment advisers have been providing investment advice for over three decades to clients who want to invest in ethical funds, that is, those which do not invest in the shares of companies trading in tobacco, alcohol, gambling or the arms trade. The main difference is that the determination of whether an investment is ethical or unethical is made by the fund managers, based on information received from various professional bodies and other specially constituted committees of reference. In the case of Islamic funds, the ultimate approval comes from the Boards of Religious Advisers, and their rulings are binding on the fund managers. After reviewing these procedures, Elfakhani, Hassan and Sidani examine the performance of the Islamic mutual funds. In the case of the Western ethical funds it would seem that ethics ‘pay’, although this may be largely because these funds have excluded tobacco companies, which have been hit by large compensation payouts. For the Islamic funds the results would seem to be more mixed. The authors conclude, overall, that the behaviour of Islamic mutual funds does not greatly differ from that of other conventional funds, with some shari’a-compliant mutual funds outperforming their relevant benchmarks and others underperforming them. However, it would seem that the Islamic mutual funds performed more strongly than their conventional equivalents during the recessionary period of the stock market, potentially opening up some possibilities for diversification across Islamic and conventional equity portfolios as a hedging strategy for downswing phases of the market. Islamic systems The chapters in this part of the book look at some system-wide regulatory and accounting issues facing Islamic banks. The first two chapters examine, in their different ways, the economic development ‘charter’ of Islamic banks. Chapter 17, by Monzer Kahf, considers Islamic banking and economic development. He begins with a strong defence and restatement of the guiding precepts of Islamic financing which he argues is basically very simple, since the banks rely on a combination of three principles (sharing, leasing and sale) and funds are channelled to entrepreneurs through sale, sharing and lease contracts. Three features of this process are conducive to development. First, there are direct links to the real economy through the profit participation, the sale and purchase of commodities and the acquisition and leasing of assets. Second,
Slide 29: Islamic banking: an introduction and overview 11 ethical and moral values are integrated with the financing so that gambling and other illicit activities do not get funded, while resources are devoted to charity and welfare needs. Third, participatory financing replaces lending, leading to a relationship between the financier and entrepreneur based on profit-generating activities. In conventional financial systems, government borrowing plays a central role in a number of respects. First, the interest rates on Treasury bills and bonds underpin the structure of short-term and long-term interest rates in the economy. They are typically the benchmark low-risk rates against which other securities are priced. Second, there are normally active secondary markets in government securities which impart liquidity to banks’ asset portfolios. Third, bill and bond markets have traditionally been the venues through which monetary policy in the form of open market operations has been conducted (although, at the short end, the ‘money market’ in a broad sense, including private bills, commercial paper and especially the market for inter-bank borrowing and lending, has assumed more significance). Fourth, long-term government bonds play a leading role in financing infrastructure, despite the fact that private sector project financing and public–private financing arrangements are a growing trend (see Chapter 14 and the comments earlier in this chapter). M. Fahim Khan, in Chapter 18, reviews the Islamic alternatives for government borrowing. This is another area in which product innovation has been extensive. Where once government borrowing in Islamically acceptable ways was seen as a major problem in attempts to move to a more complete Islamicization of financial systems in Muslim countries, this is no longer the case. There are now many instruments available. Moreover, they are able to offer in many cases fixed returns at very low risk, so meeting the requirement for Islamic benchmark rates. Some can be traded on secondary markets, meeting the second condition sought after. Third, they offer the potential for central bank operations. Fourth, because these instruments are based on assets valued as infrastructure, the final requirement is also met. We return to his analysis later in this chapter. As we saw in Chapter 10, Islamic banks are required to meet capital adequacy regulations and other standards applied to conventional banks. Accounting standards are the subject of Chapter 19, by Simon Archer and Rifaat Karim. Accounting is an important issue for Muslims because certain Islamic ethical principles have a direct impact on accounting policy and principles. The Holy Qur’an and sunna, from which ethical principles are derived, have defined clearly what is true, fair and just, what are society’s preferences and priorities, what are the corporate roles and responsibilities, and also, in some aspects, spell out specific accounting standards for accounting practices (Lewis, 2001). In an Islamic society, the development of accounting theory should be based on the provisions of Islamic law along with other necessary principles and postulates which are not in conflict with Islamic law. Two approaches suggest themselves: first, establish objectives based on the spirit of Islam and its teaching and then consider these established objectives in relation to contemporary accounting thought; second, start with objectives established in contemporary accounting thought, test them against Islamic shari’a, accept those that are consistent with shari’a and reject those that are not. Bodies such as the Accounting and Auditing Organisation for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) (2000) have followed the second approach when formulating accounting, auditing and governance standards for Islamic financial institutions. Archer and Karim favour the first approach on the grounds that accounting rules can only give
Slide 30: 12 Handbook of Islamic banking a faithful representation of transactions reported if they are accounted for in a way that gives the substance as well as the form of the shari’a contractual arrangements that govern the Islamic acceptability of the transactions. They examine a number of issues involved in developing such an agenda when there is a paucity of research on this topic. In Chapter 20, Mahmoud El-Gamal argues that the appropriate regulatory model for Islamic banks turns on the conception of the role of depositors. Should they be regarded as receiving implicit capital guarantees like depositors in conventional banks by virtue of the relatively fixed-return, low-risk assets acquired by the banks under mark-up methods? Or are depositors to be regarded as shareholders because, as holders of investment accounts, they share in the profits earned by the banks, albeit in ways different from ordinary shareholders since the investment account ‘shareholders’ do not have a voting right? El-Gamal argues that this dilemma might have been avoided if Islamic banking had evolved within a different framework, and argues a strong case for the system to be based on the mutuality principle. Whether, at a practical level, this alternative paradigm would solve the regulatory treatment issue would remain to be seen. In particular, it might not avoid the Islamic institutions being put on a par with other institutions when regulations are applied. Certainly, mutual insurance companies are subject to the same solvency standards as proprietary companies. Also credit unions and other mutual ownership financial enterprises in countries like Australia are subject to much the same regulatory framework as the privately funded banks. Regulation and the treatment of depositors are topics raised also by M. Umer Chapra in Chapter 21. Dr Chapra, one of the visionaries who forged the system of Islamic banking, reflects on the challenges facing the Islamic financial industry. Looking back at the original ideals that drove the system to be established, he notes a disconcerting gap between the dream and the reality because the Islamic financial system has not been able to escape from the straitjacket of conventional banking. Instead of using equity participation and profit-and-loss sharing modes of finance, along with appropriate monitoring systems, the bankers prefer to adopt different legal stratagems (hiyal) to transfer the entire financing and asset risk to lessees or those acquiring the assets, so violating the first principle of justice underpinning the system, namely that there be an equitable distribution of risks between the parties. Against this background he outlines a reform agenda to implement the original vision. Globalization of Islamic banking Islamic banking has always had a global orientation. Many investment accounts, especially in the Gulf, are denominated in US dollars. Because trade financing makes up so much of the asset portfolio of the Islamic banks, there is a natural vehicle available for the finance of international trade. There are many Islamic banks, business groups and investment houses controlled by the two large Islamic groups, DMI and Al-Baraka, that have a worldwide presence. Oil-related wealth provided the capital resources behind the establishment of many Islamic banks, and the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) based in Jeddah, and created in 1974, was the first institution to benefit from the inflow of oil money. Its formation with the support of the Saudi Arabian government and the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) as a multilateral organization nevertheless gave momentum to the Islamic banking movement generally, being followed soon afterwards by both
Slide 31: Islamic banking: an introduction and overview 13 private institutions (for example, Dubai Islamic Bank, 1975, Faisal Islamic Bank of Egypt, 1977, Bahrain Islamic Bank, 1979) and government institutions (for example, Kuwait Finance House, 1977). The IDB is the first of the international Islamic financial institutions examined by Munawar Iqbal in Chapter 22. It is primarily an intergovernmental bank aimed at providing funds for development projects in member countries. The IDB provides fee-based financial services and profit-sharing financial assistance to member countries. Operations are free of interest and are explicitly based on shari’a principles. From these beginnings, the IDB has grown to a large group, incorporating ICIEC providing insurance services and export credit, ICD providing corporate finance, structured finance and advisory services for private sector entities and projects in key priority areas with a developmental impact, and IRTI with a mandate for research and training. Other international financial institutions studied in the chapter are those involved with accounting standards, financial services, financial markets, credit rating, arbitration and promotion of the concept of Islamic banks and financial institutions. One of the institutions covered in Chapter 22 is the International Islamic Financial Market, created in 2002 to facilitate international trading in Islamic financial instruments across a number of financial centres. Islamic financial centres are the topic of Chapter 23, by Ricardo Baba. The value of having an international centre for Islamic finance can be argued by analogy to the role of international financial centres in conventional banking operations. At any time, there are banks with ‘surplus’ deposits which can be on-lent to an international finance centre which could act as a funnel for the funds. For each individual bank participating in such a market, the funds provided might be on a short-term basis. But a series of such short-term funds by different banks when combined would exhibit greater stability and provide resources which could be channelled into longer-term investments. At the same time, the existence of this pool of resources would attract longterm investment vehicles, and so act as a magnet for investment avenues in need of funding. Thus at the aggregate level the existence of the market would enable a succession of short-term surpluses to be transformed into longer-term investments. This is exactly what happened with the London market and international syndicated credits and much the same sort of process could occur with Islamic finance, although, in this particular instance, the new instruments and financial innovations required need to be equity or equity-based and real asset-based and not debt instruments. A number of factors seem relevant to the location of such an international centre: regulatory environment, range of markets, track record of innovation, availability of complementary services, presence of foreign institutions, time zone, language, political and economic stability, communications infrastructure, business tax regime, staffing and office costs and quality of life. In addition to these factors, an international Islamic financing centre raises further issues such as compliance with shari’a requirements and the ability of the location concerned to attract a sizable share both of Islamic investment money and of international financing activities which would qualify as being Islamically acceptable. Of course, there need not be only one centre. There is not one centre in conventional banking (witness London, New York, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong) and there seems no reason why there would not be several international centres for Islamic financing. Baba focuses on three. He sees Bahrain as the global Islamic finance centre, Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur, Labuan) as the regional centre for S.E. Asia, and London as
Slide 32: 14 Handbook of Islamic banking the Western centre for Islamic financing activities. The different roles of these locations is considered in his chapter. Islamic insurance (takaful) has developed hand-in-hand with the global expansion of Islamic banking because Islamic banks have been instrumental in the establishment of about one-half of the takaful companies and in promoting the concept. Takaful is examined in Chapter 24, by Mohd Ma’sum Billah. The nature of takaful business is not widely understood, in part because family takaful (life insurance) is so different from conventional life insurance business in the United States. However there are much closer parallels between family takaful and the unit-linked policies that operate in the UK and Australia (Lewis, 2005). (In the United States, such insurance policies are called ‘variable life’.) There are some differences, especially in nomenclature where the minimum life cover of the unit-linked policy becomes a tabarru (donation) and the policy holders’ special fund (unit trust or mutual fund) becomes a participation account. Substitute these name changes and the basic structures are remarkably similar, with differences in payout and inheritance rules and investment methods in line with Islamic law. Another important difference is that takaful operates more like a mutual insurance operation with the takaful company handling investment, business and administration. There are also three different models governing the relationship between participants and the operator. These are ta’awuni (cooperative insurance), wakala (agency) and tijari (business/commercial) which operate in different Islamic countries. Billah examines these three different models. Although all three are in line with shari’a principles, these differences may be impeding the development of a globalized takaful market. Finally, in Chapter 25, Rodney Wilson looks at Islamic banking in the West. There are over six million Muslims living in the United States, nearly two million in the UK and perhaps another ten million in the rest of Europe. A number of Islamic institutions have grown up to provide these communities with financial services in an Islamically acceptable way. Because of the relatively wealthy financial situation of some of these Muslims, and their aspirations to follow the lifestyle choices of many of their fellow citizens, housing finance has been a large part of the operations of these financial institutions. In order to conform to Islamic law, this finance has been provided in a number of shari’a-compliant modes such as ijara (leasing) and diminishing musharaka (participation finance). Islamic institutions also offer investment services, although many of these are aimed at international clients in the Gulf rather then local customers. The growth of this international orientation is one way in which London in particular has emerged as a centre for Islamic finance. Concluding remarks We conclude this introduction with some observations on product innovation. The success of Islamic banking, like any other system, rests on innovation and designing products that meet customer needs. Certainly, recent innovations in Islamic financing pass this particular test. Many innovative new products such as sukuks built around mark-up financing methods have allowed banks and their clients to engage in investment, hedging and trading activities that would have been unthinkable not so long ago. But do these instruments go too far? Unlike other financial arrangements, the Islamic system must meet another test, the religious test, and remain within the scope of Islamic law. Consider, for example, the innovations that have taken place in the area of government financing. Fahim Khan in Chapter 18 is convinced that fixed interest rate government debt
Slide 33: Islamic banking: an introduction and overview 15 along conventional lines has to be replicated with fixed return, negligible risk, Islamic securities, based upon mark-up arrangements, if a successful secondary market is to develop that can rival those in conventional financial systems. He may well be correct in this judgment. But the question then becomes one of whether, in the process of achieving this objective, the ‘baby is thrown out with the bathwater’. Let us consider the reasons given for Islamic fixed-return contracts being regarded as acceptable, as explained by Khan in Chapter 18. The pricing mechanism of Islamic financial instruments, including those of government securities would, basically, be similar to that for conventional financial instruments. The time value of money in economic and financial transactions is recognized in Islam. The only difference is that the time value of money cannot be realized as a part of the loan contract. It can be realized only as an integral part of a real transaction. Thus, in a trade transaction, if the payment of price is deferred, then the time value of money will be included in the price of the commodity. Similarly, in a leasing contract, time value is an integral part of the rent that parties agree upon. But is this really a trade transaction, or is it a loan in disguise masquerading as a commodity deal to conform to legal rules? Saadallah in Chapter 12 talks of a credit murabaha, which seems to be an accurate description of such a transaction since credit is an integral part of the transaction. Moreover, one is then led to ask how this ‘bundling’ of the time value of money and the commodity side really differs in substance from the bill of exchange route used by bankers in the Middle Ages to get round the Christian prohibition on usury. Consider the example given in Chapter 4: . . . a medieval bill of exchange transaction consisted of the sale for local currency of an obligation to pay a specified sum in another currency at a future date. It thus involved both an extension of credit and an exchange of currency. A modern-day bank would handle this transaction by converting the foreign into the local currency at the ruling spot rate of exchange, and then charging a rate of discount for the credit extended when paying out cash now for cash later. To do so in the Middle Ages would have been usurious, for discounting was not an allowable activity. Consequently, by not separating the two elements involved, the medieval banker bought the bill at a price which incorporated both an element of interest and a charge for his services as an exchange dealer . . . . . . the Medieval banker then had an open book which had to be closed by reversing the transaction and buying a bill in the foreign location, and receiving payment in his own currency. The fluctuation of exchange rates provided a convincing case of risk, since the terms at which the reverse deal could be undertaken would not be guaranteed at the time of the original transaction. It was this risk that reconciled bill dealing with the laws. In what ways do the two examples differ? It would be a great pity for the reputation of the Islamic financial system if outsiders concluded that, if there is a difference, then it is that the medieval banker seemingly felt some guilt about the subterfuge (as indicated by the amount left to charity in their wills and testaments), whereas Islamic bankers today are absolved of such guilt because they have received approval from the Shari’a Supervisory Boards (SSBs) for their replication of fixed-rate returns. One is then led to ask the question: do these instruments such as sukuks obey the letter but not the spirit of the law? Is it any wonder that one of the ‘founding fathers’ of Islamic banking, Umer Chapra, describes these techniques in Chapter 21 as ‘legal stratagems (hiyal) . . . in violation of the first condition of justice . . .’?
Slide 34: 16 Handbook of Islamic banking In Chapter 9 in this collection, Volker Nienhaus, who first contributed to the topic of Islamic banking over 20 years ago (Nienhaus, 1983), advanced reasons for the present day permissiveness of the SSBs that revolved around the ‘capture’ theory of regulation first advanced by George Stigler (1971). His observations prompt a number of questions. Is Nienhaus correct in surmising that many SSBs may have been ‘captured’ by the bankers? Has the Islamic ban on usury (riba) effectively been lost with the bankers’ success? Has Islam, unlike Christianity, maintained the rhetoric on usury, while admitting the practice? Perhaps, after all, the modernist or revisionist views on riba outlined in Chapter 3 may have triumphed in the end, in this roundabout way, over the views of the traditionalists. Or can it be argued in defence of the SSBs that an important principle, namely that there be at least some risk in financial transactions, however small, to justify reward, has been maintained under Islam? These are questions that we leave readers to ponder while working their way through the chapters that follow. When doing so, it may be worth keeping in mind that the Islamic financial system is still passing through the growing pains of developing into a legitimate and equitable financial method in world capital markets. In that sense the system is still engaged in the search for, and debates about, answers to questions such as those posed in previous paragraphs. Nevertheless, it is our belief that this process of product innovation and development, which necessarily involves a sequence of trial and error, will eventually lead to truly Islamic financial products that will enable the system to achieve its original intent of meeting the legitimate financial needs of those sharing Islamic ideals. References Accounting and Auditing Organisation for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) (2000), Accounting, Auditing and Governance Standards for Islamic Financial Institutions, Bahrain: Accounting and Auditing Organisation for Islamic Financial Institutions Ahmed, Shaghil (1989), ‘Islamic banking and finance. A review essay’, Journal of Monetary Economics, 24, 157–67. Chapra, M.U. (1985), Towards a Just Monetary System, Leicester: The Islamic Foundation. Cizaka, M. (1995), ‘Historical background’, Encyclopedia of Islamic Banking and Insurance, London: Institute of Islamic Banking and Insurance, pp. 10–14. Crone, P. (1987), Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Fender, I. and J. Mitchell (2005), ‘Structured finance: complexity, risk and the use of ratings’, BIS Quarterly Review, June, 67–79. Gopal, M.H. (1935), Mauryan Public Finance, London: George Allen & Unwin. Grimsey, D. and M.K. Lewis (2004), Public Private Partnerships: the Worldwide Revolution in Infrastructure Provision and Project Finance, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar. Hassan, M.K. and M.K. Lewis (2007), Islamic Finance, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar (forthcoming). Kazarian, E. (1991), ‘Finance and economic development, Islamic banking in Egypt’, Lund Economic Studies Number 45, Lund: University of Lund. Khan, W.M. (1985), Towards an Interest-Free Islamic Economic System, Leicester: The Islamic Foundation. Khan, W.M. (1987), ‘Towards an interest-free economic system’, in M.S. Khan and A. Mirakhor (eds), Theoretical Studies in Islamic Banking and Finance, Houston: Institute for Research and Islamic Studies. Lewis, M.K. (1992a), ‘Asset and liability management’, in P. Newman, M. Milgate and J. Eatwell (eds), New Palgrave Dictionary of Money and Finance, vol.1, London: Macmillan, pp. 70–4. Lewis (1992b), ‘Call money market’, in P. Newman, M. Milgate and J. Eatwell (eds), New Palgrave Dictionary of Money and Finance, vol.1, London: Macmillan, pp. 271–4. Lewis, M.K. (2001), ‘Islam and accounting’, Accounting Forum, 25 (2), 103–27. Lewis, M.K. (2005), ‘Wealth creation through takaful (Islamic insurance), in M. Iqbal and R. Wilson (eds), Islamic Perspectives on Wealth Creation, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 167–87. Neusner, Jacob, trans. (1990), The Talmud of Babylonia: An American Translation, Atlanta: Scholar’s Press.
Slide 35: Islamic banking: an introduction and overview 17 Nienhaus, V. (1983), ‘Profitability of Islamic banks competing with interest banks: problems and prospects’, Journal of Research in Islamic Economics, 1, 37–47. Presley, J. and J. Sessions (1994), ‘Islamic economics: the emergence of a new paradigm’, The Economic Journal, 104, 584–96. Qureshi, Anwar Iqbal ([1946] 1991), Islam and the Theory of Interest, Lahore: Sh. Md. Ashraf. Rangaswami, K. (1927), Aspects of Ancient Indian Economic Thought, Mylapore: Madras Law Journal Press. Saeed, A. (1995), ‘Islamic banking in practice: the case of Faisal Islamic Bank of Egypt’, Journal of Arabic, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, 2 (1), 28–46. Stigler, G.J. (1971), ‘The theory of economic regulation’, Bell Journal of Economics and Management, 2 (1), 1–21. Stulz, R.M. (2004), ‘Should we fear derivatives?’, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 18 (3), 173–92.
Slide 37: PART I FOUNDATIONS OF ISLAMIC FINANCING
Slide 39: 2 Development of Islamic economic and social thought Masudul Alam Choudhury Introduction Has there been a development in Islamic thought beyond a mere deepening subservience to neo-liberal economic and social doctrines, that those who enter a so-called project of Islamic economics, finance and social thinking borrow from their Western education lineage? Is there such a dichotomous and linear nature of thinking in Islam as exists between differentiated economic and social phenomena? Conversely, is there a substantive paradigm premised on Islamic epistemology that builds on the foundations of the Qur’an and the sunna that renders to the intellectual and practitioner world-system a worldview that is distinct, revolutionary and universal? What is the nature of such a foundational worldview that evaluates the contemporary Muslim mindset and compares it with the historical background of Muslim scholasticism? Instead, how does the worldview establish a revolutionary and distinctive world-system? These questions will be investigated in this chapter in an uncompromising note of criticism founded in the epistemological worldview of unity of knowledge emanating from the Qur’an and the sunna. Critical thinking: Islam v. rationalism Islamic scholarly activity has gone in waves of intellectualism over four cross-currents and conflicts through history. Such a historical trend is succinctly summarized in the words of Imam Al-Ghazzali in his Tahafut al-Falsafah (trans. Marmura, 1997, p. 217): [Man] must imitate the law, advancing or holding back [action] not as he chooses, [but] according to what [the law] directs, his moral dispositions becoming educated thereby. Whoever is deprived of this virtue in both moral disposition and knowledge is the one who perishes. . . . Whoever combines both virtues, the epistemological and the practical, is the worshipping ‘knower’, the absolutely blissful one. Whoever has the epistemological virtue but not the practical is the knowledgeable [believing] sinner who will be tormented for a period, which [torment] will not last because his soul has been perfected through knowledge but bodily occurrences had tarnished [it] in an accidental manner opposed to the substance of the soul. . . . He who has practical virtue but not the epistemological is saved and delivered, but does not attain perfect bliss. The first category belonging to the rationalist tradition belongs to people who are spiritually damned. This is the tradition to be found in the Hellenic Muslim philosophers that marked the Muslim scholastic history (Qadir, 1988). Today it is found in the Muslim mindset based on the rationalist and liberal and neoliberal doctrines of Occidentalism. In it the Muslim homage to Western tradition increases as taqlid (blind submission to [Western] authority) (Asad, 1987). The second category of the Muslim mindset is rare in contemporary Islamic intellectualism, yet it existed powerfully in cultivating Islamic intellectual and spiritual contribution to the world (Ghazzali trans. Karim, undated). 21
Slide 40: 22 Handbook of Islamic banking To this class belong the high watermarks of the mujtahid, who have derived and developed the Islamic Law, the shari’a, on the premise of the Oneness of Allah as the supreme knowledge. They placed such divine knowledge as primal and original foundations from which faith emanates and deepens. The third category of intellectualism mentioned by Ghazzali comprises the rationalist mendicants of Muslims. They indulged in speculative philosophy without a worldly meaning of practicality. The fourth category of intellectualism comprises common members of the Muslim community called the umma. They are led out of darkness into truth by the collective action and law-abiding practitioners of the divine law. They are guided and led but are not leaders and revolutionary thinkers. To this category belong the present day’s Muslim imitators and superficial proponents of the principle of tawhid (Oneness of God). They understand neither the universally functional logical formalism of tawhid nor its application in constructing the Qur’anic world-system. The functional knowledge and application of tawhid in constructing the Islamic worldview and its application to the construction of the umma have become dim in the hands of such imitators. The wave of change that swept through the above four categories of intellectualism in the Muslim mindset as pointed out by Ghazzali is a repetition of scholastic experience in contemporary times. The difference though is this: while the scholastic Muslim mindset thought of an epistemological understanding in the world-system as a coherent universality, the present generation of Muslim scholars has designed a partitioned and segmented view of the natural and social sciences, indeed of all thought process. The latter category partitioned thinking between matter and mind, the natural and social sciences, and segmented the academic disciplines within these. Political economy and world-system theory (Choudhury, 2004a) is of a more recent genre in the tradition of the epistemological and ontological contexts of the Qur’anic worldview premised on the divine law, cognitive world and materiality. But, by and large, these mark a revolutionary rebirth that remains distanced and shunned by the Muslim mind today as it embarks and deepens in rationalism and has merely a superficial understanding of tawhid and the Islamic–occidental world-system divide. Such a thought process accepts fully the Western model of neoliberal thought, methodology, perceptions, social contractibility and institutionalism. Let us examine this claim more closely. The epistemological roots of Muslim rationalism: the scholastic period The rationalism of the Mutazzilah, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Sina and Al-Farabi The above-mentioned names were among the rationalist Muslim philosophers who perceived the nature of the world in the light of ideas of deductive syllogism derived from Greek thought. They then applied such ideas to the discussion of the nature of the universe. They both derived as well as embedded the ethical and moral ideas in their rationally construed philosophy. Such Hellenic philosophers did not premise their precepts on the Qur’an and the sunna. The metaphysical and rationalist nature of such inquiry rendered Muslim beliefs speculative philosophy. The final result was that a body of speculative philosophy arose that hinged on syllogistic deduction of the existence of God, predestination and the nature of the universe, the Qur’an and their functions. The above-mentioned rationalist thinking was the harbinger of the eighteenth-century utilitarianism. Muslim rationalists relied on the cognitive worth of a concept. Al-Farabi’s theory of the universe, for instance, was limited by the extent of matter (Walzer, 1985).
Slide 41: Development of Islamic economic and social thought 23 There was no existence of the universe outside the field of matter. This idea was grandly extended by Einstein’s (Einstein, 1954) problem of space and time. Within his conception of material universe bounded by materiality, Al-Farabi assigned his meaning to justice and freedom while reconstructing his Greek allegiance to these concepts (Aristotle, trans. Welldon, 1987). While Aristotle thought of happiness and freedom as being non-material in nature, Al-Farabi, like the latter-days’ utilitarian, saw the ethical attributes as having meaning within material substance (such as beauty and human needs). To Al-Farabi the way towards the discovery of this ethical substance was reason. He thus placed reason above revelation and thought of the Prophet Muhammad as philosopher–king. As in the case of latter days’ utilitarianism, social ordering was thought of in terms of rationally motivated self-interested agents aiming at optimization of decision and power. Such agents had to be self-seeking and individualistic owing to their maximizing objectives with the associated analytical, self and institutional perceptions. In economics, the function of resource allocation, market exchange and the pricing of goods, services and productive factors were thereby governed by the principle of economic rationality as the cause and effect of the precepts of optimality and steady-state equilibrium. Since economic rationality assumes the existence of full information in making rational choices the utilitarian precept, this idea induces a sequence of preference pre-ordering defining institutional and individual perceptions coherently. We thus find that the various ramifications of neoclassical utilitarianism existed in Al-Farabi’s model of the perfect state, which exists solely in human cognition, not reality (Walzer, 1985). The Mutazzilites, Al-Farabi, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Sina, the Ikhwan as-Safa and many other Muslim rationalists were dialecticians belonging to the school of ethical egoism. Man was elevated to the higher level of an evolutionary category rising above the mineral kingdom, the vegetable kingdom and the animal kingdom. The ethical interaction between these subsystems of total reality was marginalized to partitioned views of existence. This echoed early Darwinian beginnings in which the mind was perceptually partitioned between matter and spirit. When such dialectical thought is applied to themes such as the philosophy of history, we come to perceive something of Hegelian-Marxism in it. The continuous rise of the human and worldly order towards God can be interpreted in the same way as the rise of the World-Spirit, about which Hegel wrote in his philosophy of history (Hegel, trans. Sibree, 1956). On the other hand, understanding the basis of the universe as a field of matter invoking ethical egoism belongs to the Marxist genre. Marx premised his idea of political economy on sheer economics and made this the explanatory social field of his overdetermination praxis, where everything remains in a perpetual flux of conflict and disequilibrium (Resnick and Wolff, 1987; Staniland, 1985). Furthermore, like Kant, the Muslim dialecticians believed in the deductive process of causation arising from the divine will. Hence predestination was strongly upheld by this school. Nor did the dialecticians believe in the inductive possibility that God’s Law could be comprehended by inferences from the cumulative sensations of the evidential world. We thereby infer that the dialecticians did not develop any model of knowledge at all in terms of its essential parts: epistemology, ontology and the ontic (evidential) stages that go interactively together in a coherent model of the knowledge-centred universe. The effects of the otherwise rationalist models were transmitted to the social, economic, political and scientific thought of the Muslim dialecticians.
Slide 42: 24 Handbook of Islamic banking According to the tenets of natural liberty, the structure of society in relation to states of equilibrium, optimality and ethical egoism was provided in terms of the law of natural liberty. The theory of justice and fairness conceptualized in terms of rationalism rather than in terms of the divine episteme was subsequently introduced into theories of markets and institutions. Such an approach to the study of society, institutions and scientific phenomena caused the latter day Muslim rationalists to remain oblivious to the Shar’ia and an orthodox interpretation of the Qur’an on these issues. Ibn Khaldun (1332AD–1406AD) Ibn Khaldun (1332AD–1406AD) also belonged to the rationalist and empiricist school (Ibn Khaldun, trans. Rozenthal, 1958). His conceptual philosophy of history was not premised on a Qur’anic understanding of historicism. Contrarily, Ibn Khaldun’s ideas on historical change were premised on his observation of North African society of his time. He saw in such historical change the variations in different stages of social evolution from the hard and frugal life of the early years of a city-state to the emerging process of civilization (umran). During the frugal periods of social evolution, Ibn Khaldun saw a strong sense of Islamic belief and solidarity within its rank and file. This social state was further pampered as the umran neared. Ibn Khaldun also brought into his analysis of social change the concept of a science of culture (Mahdi, 1964). He associated with this science the prevalence of a divine will in the conduct of worldly affairs, and saw in it the causes of a predestined pattern of social change. To Ibn Khaldun the science of culture meant a methodological understanding of an indelible path of change governed by divine will. Ibn Khaldun, though, failed to explain the following questions of historical dynamics: how were the cycles of history determined endogenously by a conscious recognition, understanding and methodological application of the divine will as the framework of the science of culture? Can a civilization revert to the path of moral advance after its decadences in the ascent to material acquisition? Thus one fails to find in Ibn Khaldun a substantive formulation of the philosophy of history pertaining to the Qur’anic principle of civilization cycle. Note the understanding of historical evolutionary cycles in following Qur’anic verse: It is He who begins the process of creation, and repeats it, that He may reward with justice those who believe and work righteousness . . . (9:4) Ibn Khaldun did not contribute to this very important Qur’anic principle of creative evolution, khalq in-jadid (or khalqa summa yue’id). Being unable to explain the Qur’anic cycle of change and progress, Ibn Khaldun was equally unable to formalize a methodological theory of the shari’a as a social contract embedded in the historical semblance of universal equilibrium and meaning. For instance, Ibn Khaldun argued that, although the shari’a was the golden rule for mankind to emulate, the imperfect human communities were not running according to these sublime precepts. Hence Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah (Rozenthal, 1958) became simply a study of empirical facts underlying observed changes. He did not go deeper into the normative content and possibility of the shari’a in the context of interaction between shari’a and historicism.
Slide 43: Development of Islamic economic and social thought 25 Likewise, Ibn Khaldun’s economic ideas on the social division of labour and his twosector analysis of urban and agricultural development were based on a ‘perfect competition’ model of efficient allocation of resources and ownership. Such a model became the abiding one for latter days’ occidental thought, particularly following the classical economic school in the development of both individual and social preferences and in the theory of division of labour. The result was the occidental socioscientific legacy of methodological independence and individualism. Ibn Khaldun’s sociological and historical study of the state, governance, development and social change rested upon a similar view of North African sociological reality. Ibn Khaldun did not consider the issue of the endogeneity of values. While he pointed out that overindulgence of a city, state and civilization (umran) brings about the decay of social solidarity and commitment to the community (asabiyya), he did not consider whether there could be a reversal of such a decadent condition after its failure. In other words, Ibn Khaldun’s historicity does not consider the possibility of the shari’a being established in a progressive modern nation that could reverse the process of social decadence. Thus no circular dynamics of historicism is explainable by the Khaldunian social theory. Ibn Khaldun had given a rationalist interpretation of historical change based on empirical observations of societies in North Africa during his time. Khaldunian historicism began a positivistic root in empirical facts. There was no permanently underlying epistemology driving the process of historical change. Ibn Khaldun’s calling on divine reality in his science of culture remained an exogenous invocation of tawhid in social theory. He failed to derive an essentially Qur’anic philosophy of history, wherein the process of change is endogenously explained by interaction between moral and ethical forces that learn by the law of divine unity with historical and social dynamics. At best we find in Ibn Khaldun the emergence of a dichotomy between the epistemic roots of divine law, which like Kant’s impossibility of pure reason, remains outside comprehensive socioscientific reality. On the other hand, like Hume’s ontological sense perception, Ibn Khaldun’s empirical social science was his analytical premise. Al-Kindi (801AD–873AD) Atiyeh (1985, p. 23) points out that Al-Kindi had no consistent way of treating the subject matter of revelation and reason. The philosophical thought of the rationalist scholastics as exemplified by Al-Kindi manifested a separation of reason from revelation or a tenuous link between the two. The precept of divine unity was thus simply invoked but not epistemologically integrated with the Qur’anic interpretation of the matter–mind–spirit interrelationship. The Muslim rationalists like Al-Kindi merged philosophy with religious or theological inquiry. The result was blurring of a clear vision as to which comes first, revelation or reason, since reason is simply an instrument and therefore subservient to what Al-Kindi called the First Philosophy. This Al-Kindi reasoning was an Aristotelian consequence. Atiyeh (1985, p. 23) explains the problem of certainty between philosophy (reason) and religion (revelation) as the source of the ultimate knowledge for the quest of tawhid: ‘AlKindi’s inclusion of theology in philosophy confronts us with a problem. If philosophy’s main purpose is to strengthen the position of religion, philosophy should be a handmaiden to theology and not vice versa. What strikes one particularly is that this inclusion
Slide 44: 26 Handbook of Islamic banking of theology in philosophy is a direct Aristotelian borrowing and therefore points towards a higher esteem for philosophy than for religion’ (tawhid from the Qur’an). Contemporary Muslim socioscientific scholars have been caught in this same Al-Kindi problématique. The desire for Islamization of knowledge fell into a trap: what are they Islamizing? Is it Islamic knowledge, or Western knowledge, lock stock and barrel, to Islamize with a palliative of Islamic values? The continuing criticism of this chapter is that the tawhidi worldview, which is the fundamental epistemology of Islamic worldview, was only uttered but never understood as a substantive formal logic entering formalism of the tawhidi epistemological worldview. Contrarily, this is the premise where the Islamic transformation of all socioscientific thinking and world-system must begin and take shape and form as the divinely revealed episteme singularly above reason interacting and driving experience. Almost all Muslim scholars working in the socioscientific fields and claiming tawhid have not enquired into the epistemological foundations (Al-Faruqi, 1982; AbuSulayman, 1988; Siddiqui, 1979; Chapra, 1992, p. 202). I will elaborate on my criticism of a few Muslim scholars later. The project of Islamization remains deadlocked as the Western epistemological and methods programme with a palliative of Islamic values without the tawhidi analytical content. Such was the age of the Muslim rationalists. It is still the age of rationalism devoid of the tawhidi epistemology in the socioscientific realm today. Rationalism at all levels was opposed powerfully by the second category of Muslims. In the scholastic epoch the intellectual opposition was championed by Imam Ghazzali. What was the nature of scholarship in this category as expressed by the epistemologists of the tawhidi worldview? Islamic epistemologists and the world-system Imam Ghazzali’s social theory (1058AD–1111AD) Ghazzali was by and large a sociopsychologist searching for the source of spiritual solace for the individual soul. Within this field he thought of society. The spiritual capability of attaining moral eminence conveyed the real meaning of freedom to him. Such a state of freedom was to rescue the soul from material limitations of life. Self-actualization was possible in the perfect state of fana’, the highest state of spiritual realization that the individual could attain by coming nearest to God. Such a state was possible only through the understanding of tawhid at its highest level transcending the 70 veils of divine light. Ghazzali thought the human soul or cognizance advances by means of and toward spirituality. To Ghazzali such a perfect state could be humanly experienced through complete submission to God’s will (trans. Buchman, 1998). Ghazzali’s social theory was premised profoundly on the episteme of Oneness of God. In economic theory, the implication of Ghazzali’s concept of fana’ and the aggregation of preference is equivalent to the invisible hand principle of atomistic market order governed by economic rationality (full information). The market equilibrium price is now formed by such an invisible hand principle. This kind of completeness of information and knowledge is the reflected manifestation of the act of God in the scheme of things. Ibn Al-Arabi on divine unity (1165AD–1240AD) Ibn al-Arabi’s (1165AD–1240AD) ideas on divine unity as the sole foundation of knowledge are noteworthy. Al-Arabi pointed out that knowledge can be derived in just two ways and there is no third way. He writes in his Futuhat (Chittick,1989):
Slide 45: Development of Islamic economic and social thought 27 The first way is by way of unveiling. It is an incontrovertible knowledge which is actualized through unveiling and which man finds in himself. He receives no obfuscation along with it and is not able to repel it . . . . The second way is the way of reflection and reasoning (istidlal) through rational demonstration (burhan ’aqli). This way is lower than the first way, since he who bases his consideration upon proof can be visited by obfuscations which detract from the proof, and only with difficulty can he remove them. Imam Ibn Taimiyyah’s social theory (1263AD–1328AD) Ibn Taimiyyah’s significant contribution to the field of political economy was his theory of social guidance and regulation of the market order when this proved to be unjust, unfair and inimical to the shari’a. In his small but important work, Al-Hisbah fil Islam (Ibn Taimiyyah, trans. Holland, 1983) Ibn Taimiyyah recommended the establishment of an agency to oversee the proper guidance of markets to minimize unjust and unfair practice. The work was written during the reign of the Mamluk Dynasty in Egypt, where he found gross inequity and unfair practices contradicting the tenets of the shari’a in the market order. Thus both Imam Taimiyyah and his contemporary, Al-Markizi, opposed the Mamluk policies of unjust and unfair market practices. They opposed the conversion of the monetary standard from gold to copper (fulus), the effect of which was phenomenal inflationary pressure. ‘Bad money’ drove out ‘good money’ from usage. Hyperinflationary conditions of the time brought about economic hardship and poverty in the nation. Hence price control, fair dealing and appropriate measures to revert back to the gold standard were prescribed in Ibn Taimiyyah’s social regulatory and guiding study, Al-Hisbah fil Islam. The theory of Al-Hisbah fil Islam proved to be an institutionalist approach based on the legal framework of the shari’a calling for reversal to shari’a-driven policies as measures of compensation principle. Such issues were only recently considered by Ronald Coase (1960). But in keeping with the tenets of the shari’a, Al-Hisbah did not prescribe the compensation principle to be realized out of tax revenue, for Ibn Taimiyyah, in accordance with the ahadith (guidance) of the Prophet Muhammad, promoted sovereignty of the market process in terms of its self-organizing force. Market intervention was necessary only when market behaviour contravened the shari’a. The Al-Hisbah as a social institution was meant to return a corrupt market order to the true values of market exchange. Ibn Taimiyyah’s market order comprised an endogenously embedded social and economic system governed by ethical values and legal precepts. To Ibn Taimiyyah, the concept of value in exchange was inextricably made out of ethical and material worth. Such theories of market and endogenous social value are not to be found in an occidental history of economic thought. Smith (reprinted 1976), Marx (Resnick and Wolff, 1987) and Walras (trans. Jaffe 1954) wanted to introduce such ideals. Yet Smith’s attempt contradicted his concept of laissez faire or non-intervention. Marx’s epistemological concept of overdetermination of a social system resulted in an early form of social Darwinism. Walras’s general equilibrium system was premised on an exogenous monetary unit as the numéraire of his general equilibrium system. This caused competition between money and real economy as two opposing sector activities. The result was the inevitable prevalence of the interest rate as the price of money in contradistinction to the price of goods. Even in the ethical theory of moral sentiment, Smith’s precept of natural liberty working in the rationalist human order lost its fervour when it was applied to the invisible hands of the market order as in Smith’s Wealth of Nations.
Slide 46: 28 Handbook of Islamic banking We note Ibn Taimiyyah’s combination of the ontology of the shari’a in terms of the Prophet’s sunna with the social necessity to correct adverse market consequences. This was a strong manifestation of the circular relationship between the ethical values as deductive rule, and the world-system, which stands in need of policy and institutionally induced reformation. The same integrative conception is also to be interpreted as a methodological approach in combining the normative with the positive elements of social thought. Imam Shatibi’s social theory (d. 1388AD) A similar theory of social contract was expounded by Imam Shatibi, who was a contemporary of Imam Ibn Taimiyyah. The two developed and applied the dynamic tenets of the shari’a to practical social, economic and institutional issues and problems of the time. Imam Shatibi was an original thinker on the development of the shari’a in the light of individual preference and social preference and their relationship with the institutional tenets of public purpose. Imam Shatibi thus brought the Islamic discursive process (shura and rule making) to the centre of the very important issue of development of the shari’a through discourse, ijtihad and ijma (Shatibi, trans. Abdullah Draz, undated). Imam Shatibi’s preference theory, called Al-Maslaha Wa-Istihsan, is a forerunner of the profound concept of social wellbeing in most recent times (Sen, 1990). In the perspective of this concept, Imam Shatibi took up his principles on which the shari’a can be developed (Masud, 1994). These principles are (1) universal intelligibility; (2) linking the possibility of action to the degree of physical efforts rendered; (3) adaptation of the shari’a to the natural and regional differentiation of customs and practices. By combining these attributes in the development of the shari’a, Imam Shatibi was able to deliver a comprehensive theory of social wellbeing. The social wellbeing criterion explained the aggregate view of preference in society within the tenets of the shari’a. By combining the above principles, Imam Shatibi examined both the core and the instrumental aspects of the shari’a. According to his ‘theory of meaning’ of the core of the shari’a (Usul al-shari’a), Imam Shatibi ‘dismisses the existence of conflict, contradiction and difference in the divine law, arguing that at the fundamental level there is unity. Variety and disagreement, apparent at the second level are not the intention and objective of the law’ (Masud, 1994). This aspect of Shatibi’s perspective on the shari’a adds a dynamic spirit to the moral law. Through such universality and the dynamic nature of the moral law, Imam Shatibi was aiming at a universal theory of social wellbeing. Using the integrative perspective of social preference made out of the interactive preferences of members of society, Imam Shatibi thought of the necessities of life as fundamental life-fulfilling goods. To incorporate basic needs into dynamic evolution of life-sustaining regimes, he subsequently introduced basic-needs regimes into his analysis. These were the social needs for comfort and refinements of life. All the components, namely basic needs, comfort and refinement, were for life-fulfilment at the advancing levels of a basic-needs regime of socioeconomic development. On the basis of the dynamic basic-needs regime of socioeconomic development, Imam Shatibi constructed his social wellbeing criterion, and thereby, his theory of preference and the public purpose, Al-Maslaha Wa-Istihsan. These ideas proved to be far in advance of their time in the social meaning and preferences of life.
Slide 47: Development of Islamic economic and social thought 29 Shah Waliullah’s social theory (1703AD–1763AD) Shah Waliullah was a sociologist and a historian. His approach in explaining Islamic social theory took its roots from the Qur’an. In his study he saw the need for an independent body of knowledge to study all the worldly and intricate problems of life and thought. As one of the great scholars of the shari’a, Shah Waliullah combined reason, discourse and extension by ijtihad (rule making by consensus and epistemological reference to the Qur’an and the sunna) in the understanding and application of the Islamic law. Shah Waliullah’s methodology on the commentary of the Qur’an was based on diverse approaches. He held the view that the study of the Qur’an can embrace viewpoints which are traditionalist, dialectical, legalist, grammarian, those of a lexicographer, a man of letters, a mystic or an independent reader. Yet in all of these approaches the integrity of the Qur’anic foundational meaning cannot be dispensed with. In this regard Shah Waliullah wrote, ‘I am a student of the Qur’an without any intermediary’ (Jalbani, 1967 p. 67). He thus combined all of the above-mentioned approaches to render his own independent exegesis of the Qur’an pertaining to worldly issues and the study of the Qur’an. Shah Waliullah’s outstanding contribution comprised his Qur’anic interpretation of sociological change in the light of historicism. According to him, history is a movement across phases of social arrangements starting from primitive stages and then advancing in stages through feudal, medieval and higher levels of civilization. But, unlike Ibn Khaldun, Shah Waliullah thought of a continuous possibility for moral reformation and decline in the process of civilization change. According to Shah Waliullah, it was possible for a civilization even at the highest stage of its advance not to be pampered by the softness of that life, as claimed by Ibn Khaldun in his theory of asabiyyah (community) and umran (nation state). The determinant of a civilization going through cycles of prosperity and decline was seen as a function of the perspective of the moral and social order according to the shari’a. Thus Shah Waliullah had a truly evolutionary understanding of historical change, which was missing in Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah. Shah Waliullah used the principle of irtifaq (Jalbani, 1967), meaning social cooperation, to explain the hierarchical movement of society across its four stages of development. These stages are, first, the jungle life characterized by crude basic needs of life. Within this stage Waliullah also considers dynamic necessities of man in a growing social environment, such as the stage of comforts evolving to refinements. The second stage of human development according to Waliullah is the development of social laws and mutual coexistence. The third stage is nationalism marked by institutional development and well-knit organization with mutual cooperation among various parts of the organizational structure. The need for a just ruler becomes predominant in establishing social cohesion. Government collects fair taxes for its social functions and defence. The fourth stage in Waliullah’s theory of human development is internationalism. Precepts of trade, development, war and peace are taken up within the purview of an international order. Law and order is seen to require adequate government treasury for meeting war needs. According to Waliullah, the guarantee of basic needs was a mandatory social function. Such basic needs were seen to be dynamic in satisfying the ever-changing needs of society over its distinct evolutionary phases and functions.
Slide 48: 30 Handbook of Islamic banking Malek Ben Nabi’s social and scientific theory A significant use of the interdisciplinary approach to Qur’anic exegesis in developing shari’a rules as a dynamic law was undertaken by Malek Ben Nabi in his phenomenological study of the Qur’an (Nabi, trans. Kirkary, 1983). Within his phenomenological theory, Malek Ben Nabi could not reject evolutionary theory. He placed the precept of the Oneness of God at the centre of all causation. He then introduced the guidance of the sunna as the medium for comprehending and disseminating the episteme of divine unity in the world-system. Thus the ontological and ontic (evidential) derivations of the latter category comprised Nabi’s phenomenological consequences on the premise of the epistemology of divine unity. This integration between God, man and the world carries the message of causal interrelationship between the normative and positive laws, deductive and inductive reasoning. Nabi’s evolutionary phenomenology was a reflection of his Qur’anic interpretation of historical change. In this respect he shared the views of Shah Waliullah on this topic, respecting the unfolding of human development in consonance with the levels of deliverance of the prophetic message and social change. But Nabi extended his evolutionary argument beyond simply the social arena. He also examined the problem of scientific phenomenology in the light of the Qur’an. Nabi wrote (Kirkary, 1983 pp. 23–4): The evolution of this matter would be regulated by an intelligence which assures equilibrium and harmony and whose unchangeable laws human science can establish. But certain steps in this evolution will escape the usual assertion of men of science, without which there would be a lacuna in the system. In these exceptional cases, one allows for the intervention of a metaphysical determinism, an intervention which contradicts nothing since it is compatible with the nature of the axiom. Where there would have been lacuna in the preceding system, here there is an intervention of a voluntary, conscious, and creative cause. History, according to Malek Ben Nabi, is thus a movement of events that is determined by and in turn reinforces the principle of cause and effect on the moral plane. Such is the interrelationship between God, man and the world through the divine law. To this tawhidi foundation conform the social and natural laws (sciences) in the Islamic worldview. Contemporary Muslim reaction: devoid of epistemology The Islamizing agenda In recent times, to get out of the human resource development enigma of Muslims, Ismail Al-Raji Faruqi led the way in the so-called ‘Islamization’ of knowledge. Rahman and Faruqi formed opposite opinions on this project (Rahman, 1958). Al-Faruqi (1982) thought of the Islamization of knowledge in terms of introducing Western learning into received Islamic values and vice versa. This proved to be a mere peripheral treatment of Islamic values in relation to Western knowledge. It is true that out of the programme of Islamization of knowledge arose Islamic universities in many Muslim countries. Yet the academic programmes of these universities were not founded upon a substantive understanding and application of the tawhidi epistemology. The theory of knowledge with a substantive integrated content remains absent in Islamic institutional development. This last approach mentioned above could otherwise have been introduced into the study of complex endogenous relations in and among scientific theory, development, social and economic issues and political inquiry. The Islamic universities remained silent
Slide 49: Development of Islamic economic and social thought 31 on these complex issues as they became subservient to the will and requirements of political establishments that fund their activities and allow such universities to exist in the first place. Thus the same mainstream thinking by Muslim scholars went on to be imitated under an externally enunciated and exogenously driven Islamic way of thinking. The bearing of the Qur’anic worldview in all the essentials of learning remained marginalized and weak. Islamization and Islamic banks In the financial and economic field, Islamic banks have mushroomed under an Islamization agenda, yet the foundation and principles of Islamic banks give no comprehensive vision of a background intellectual mass of ways to transform the prevailing environment of interest transactions into an interest-free system. How do the economic and financial economies determine risk diversification and prospective diversity of investment and production, thus mobilizing financial resources in the real economy along shari’a-determined opportunities? The financial reports of Islamic banks show an inordinately large proportion of assets floating in foreign trade financing. These portfolios have only to do with sheer mercantilist business returns from charging a mark-up on merchandise, called murabaha. Such a mark-up has nothing in common with real economic returns arising from the use of trade financing. Consequently the mobilization of resources through foreign trade financing alone has helped neither to increase intercommunal trade financing in Muslim countries nor to increase returns through development prospects in the real economic sectors of undertaking foreign trade financing. Islamic banks have not constructed a programme of comprehensive development by rethinking the nature of money in Islam in terms of the intrinsic relationship between money as a moral and social necessity linked endogenously with real economic activities. Here endogenous money value is reflected only in the returns obtained from the mobilization of real sectoral resources that money uses to monetize real economic activities according to the shari’a. Money does not have any intrinsic value of its own apart from the value of the precious metals that are to be found in real sector production of such items. The structural change leading to such money, society, finance and economic transformation has not been possible in Islamic banks. Contrarily, Islamic banks today are simply pursuing goals of efficiency and profitability within the globalization agenda as sponsored by the West and the international development finance organizations. Thus, Islamic banks are found to have launched a competitive programme in the midst of privatization, market openness, rent-seeking economic behaviour and financial competition, contrary to promoting cooperation between them and other financial institutions. A study carried out by Choudhury (1999) showed that, although deposits have risen phenomenally in Islamic banks as a whole, the rate of profitability (distributed dividends/deposit) remained low, at 1.66 per cent. The investment portfolio of Islamic banks is overly biased toward foreign trade financing and equity financing. Yet, as is known, equity financing is destined to be highly risky when adequate sectoral diversification and progressive production and investments remain impossible for Islamic financial and non-banking institutions. We therefore infer that the high level of deposits in Islamic banks comes from the sincere desire by Muslims to turn to meaningful modes of Islamic financing. The dynamics of Islamic transformation and an equitable and participatory
Slide 50: 32 Handbook of Islamic banking framework of business operations as forms of Islamic relations have received marginal attention at the social and institutional levels and in reference to Islamic socioeconomic transformation of the Muslim world. Logical faults of Western thinking: resource allocation concept and its Muslim imitation In the end, we find that the clamour of Islamic economic thinking over the last 70 years or so has remained subdued. It has produced no truly Qur’anic worldview to develop ideas, and thereby to contribute to a new era of social and economic thinking and experience. The principle of marginal rate of substitution that remains dominant in all of Western economic, financial and scientific thought has entered the entire framework of Islamic social, economic and financing reasoning. This has resulted in a complete absence of the praxis of unity of knowledge as expressed by social, economic and institutional complementarities at the epistemological, analytical and applied levels. No structural change other than perpetuation of mechanical methods at the expense of the Qur’anic worldview arises from incongruent relations. The Qur’anic methodological praxis rejects such an incongruent mixture of belief mixed with disbelief. By a similar argument, the neoclassical marginal substitution agenda of development planning is found to enter the imitative growth-led economic prescription of all Muslim countries. Recently, such growth and marginalist thinking has received unquestioned support by Muslim economists like Chapra (1993) and Naqvi (1994). Siddiqui (undated) does not recognize the fundamental role of interest rates in the macroeconomic savings function as opposed to the resource mobilization function and, thereby, the consequential conflicting relationship between the real and financial sectors. He thereby endorses ‘saving’ in an Islamic economy. These Muslim economists follow the macroeconomic arguments of capital accumulation via ‘savings’ as opposed to the substantive meaning of resource mobilization (Ventelou, 2005) according to the Qur’anic principle interlinking spending, trade, charity and the consequential abolition of interest (riba) (Qur’an, 2:264–80). The Muslim economists failed to understand the system of evolutionary circular causation between these Qur’anic recommended activities underlying the process of phasing out interest rates through the medium of a money–real economy interrelationship (Choudhury, 1998, 2005). The concept of financial ‘saving’ in both the macroeconomic and microeconomic sense carries with it an inherent price for deferred spending. Such a price of deferment caused by ‘saving’ is the rate of interest on savings. Likewise, savings and thereby also the underlying interest motive in it, generate capital accumulation (Nitzan and Bichler, 2000). Capital accumulation so generated, in turn plays a central role in economic growth. These, together with the consequent pricing areas of factors of production in an economic growth model, have simply been misunderstood by Islamic economists while applying classical and neoclassical reasoning and analytical models to Islamic economic, financial and social issues (Bashir and Darrat, 1992; Metwally, 1991). The nearest that Islamic economists have come to applying alternative theories of economic growth is by using an endogenous growth model (Romer, 1986). Yet the neoclassical marginal substitution roots of such a growth model have been kept intact. Thus the methodology of circular causation in the light of tawhidi epistemology remained unknown to contemporary Muslim scholars.
Slide 51: Development of Islamic economic and social thought 33 The future of Islamic transformation In the light of the above discussion we note the deeply partitioned views in the development of Muslim thought from two distinct angles – Islamic epistemology and Muslim rationalism. This conflict started at the time of the Mutazzilah, about a hundred years after the Prophet Muhammad, followed by the scholastics. The same train of thought is being pursued today by a blind acceptance of economic, social and institutional neoliberalism. As a result of such imitation (taqlid) in Muslim thinking, no overwhelming attempt has been made to bridge the gap between the Qur’anic epistemological thinking and Occidental rationalism. The totality of a tawhidi unified worldview according to the Qur’an could not be introduced into the body framework of Muslim thinking. The rise of the umma that would be led by the tawhidi epistemology for guidance and change fell apart. Our discussion brings out the important focus on the deep and long-standing problem of the Muslim world. This is the lack of a clear and unified vision premised on the praxis of tawhidi unity of knowledge. How can science, society, economy, state, development and social contract be formalized within the framework of the Qur’anic episteme of unity of life and its world-system? There are burning questions that need to be addressed. It is the indifference and division between the Muslim rationalists and Islamic epistemologists over a long period of time historically that has left the Muslim world ‘floundering in a flood of confusion’, as the Qur’an declares. The tawhidi methodology in Islamic reconstruction In this chapter we have argued that only along the epistemological, ontological and ontic circular causal interrelations of the tawhidi knowledge-centred worldview is it possible to establish a truly Qur’anic methodology for all the sciences. We point out the nature of the tawhidi approach using creative evolution for the realization of an Islamic transformation. Discourse along lines of tawhidi epistemology and its ontologically constructed worldsystem needs to prevail in all sectors between Muslim nations. According to the learning impetus within a maturing transformation process, consensus on such interactive venues can be attained. Thereby, the Muslim world as a whole and her communities would come to evaluate the level of social wellbeing determined through the participatory and complementary process of development in the light of the shari’a. The evaluation of such a social wellbeing criterion, within the interactive institutions of economy, markets, society, governments and the extended Muslim community, gives rise to consensus and creative evolution. This in turn leads to heightened understanding and implementation of the circular causation and continuity framework of the knowledge-centred worldview. In this way, the worldview of tawhidi unity of knowledge is generated through a cycle of human resource development and participation – a complex symbiosis (Choudhury, 1998). From the nature of economic and social transformation that has been traced above arises the interrelated realization of distributive equity and economic efficiency as a socioeconomic example of the complementary relations of participation, organization and methodology. The complementary realization of the two socioeconomic goals results in social justice. An appropriate form of development, with endogenous participation at all levels and sustained by appropriate economic, financial and institutional instruments and organization, determines sustainability for the Islamic world. There is no need to feverishly imitate Occidentalism in the tawhidi paradigm.
Slide 52: 34 Handbook of Islamic banking Social wellbeing criterion for Islamic banks The social wellbeing function as the objective criterion of Islamic banks serving the shari’a tenets of social security, protection of individual rights and progeny, and preservation of the Islamic State, ought to become a description of ways and means of stimulating resource mobilization that establishes sustainability and the high ideals of the Islamic faith. This goal involves the principle of tawhid. That is, the Oneness of God as the highest principle of Islam. The model implementing the principle of tawhid in the socioeconomic, financial and institutional order involves organizing the modes of resource mobilization, production and financing these in ways that bring about complementary linkages between these and other shari’a-determined possibilities. In this way, there will appear co-determination among the choices and the evolution of the instruments to be selected and implemented by many agencies in society at large through discourse. Islamic banks ought to form a part and parcel interconnecting medium of a lively developmental organism of the umma. Development possibilities are realized both by the networking of discourse between management and shareholders of an Islamic bank as well as in concert with other Islamic banks, the central bank, enterprises, government and the community at large. This construction is extended across the Muslim world. In this way, a vast network of discourserelated networking and relational systems is established between Islamic banks and the socioeconomic and socioinstitutional order as a whole. Such unifying relations as participatory linkages in the economy and society-wide sense convey the systemic meaning of unity of knowledge. This in turn represents the epistemology of tawhid in the organic order of things. In the present case such a complementing and circular causation interrelationship is understood by their unifying interrelationships with the socioeconomic and socioinstitutional order in terms of the choice of cooperative financing instruments. The literal meaning of tawhid is thus explained in terms of an increasingly relational, participatory and complementary development, wherein events such as money, finance, markets, society and institutions unify. In the end, by combining the totality of the shari’a precepts with financing instruments, Islamic banks become investment-oriented financial intermediaries and agencies of sustainability of the socioeconomic order, the sociopolitical order and institutions of preservation of community assets and wellbeing. The nature of money now turns out to be endogenous. Endogenous money is a systemic instrument that establishes complementarities between socioeconomic, financial, social and institutional possibilities towards sustaining circular causation between money, finance, spending on the good things of life and the real economy. Money in such a systemic sense of complementary linkages between itself, financial instruments and the real economic and social needs according to the shari’a assumes the properties of a ‘quantity of money’ (Friedman, 1989) as in the monetary equation of exchange. In the endogenous interrelationships between money and the real economy, the quantity of money is determined and valued in terms of the value of spending in shari’a goods and services in exchange. Money cannot have an exchange value of its own, which otherwise would result in a price for money as the rate of interest. Money does not have a market and hence no conceptions of demand and supply linked to such endogenous money in Islam. The shari’a riba rule forbids interest transactions. Thus, instead of a market for money and the corresponding supporting financial instruments, there are now simply markets of exchangeables in the light of the shari’a. In this sense, the quantity of endogenous money
Slide 53: Development of Islamic economic and social thought 35 and the returns on it are determined by the real economic value of the exchange between shari’a goods and services in demand and supply. Besides, such real exchangeable goods and services being those that are recommended by the shari’a enter a social wellbeing criterion to evaluate the degree of attained complementarities between the shari’a-determined possibilities via a dynamic circular causation between such evolving possibilities. Such a social wellbeing function is the criterion that evaluates the degree to which complementary linkages are generated and sustained between various possibilities as shari’a-determined choices. On the basis of valuation of exchange of goods and services, the real financial returns are measured as a function of prices, output and net profits and private as well as social returns on spending. Islamic banks ought to become important links between the national central banks, financial intermediaries, the economy and community in realizing the regime of such endogenous money, finance and market interrelations through the formalism of evolutionary circular causation as strong economic, social and developmental causality driven by the principle of universal complementarities as the worldly mark of tawhidi unity of knowledge in systems. Conclusion The dividing line between current understanding of Islamic–Occidental connection and the tawhidi worldview as the methodological and logical formalism of unity of divine knowledge in thought and its ontologically constructed world-system spells out the dualism caused by rationalism. With this are carried the two contrasting perceptions, social contractibility and institutionalism. The distinction is also between the emptiness of Islamic theology (Nasr, 1992) and tawhidi formalism with its application in the truly Islamic world-system and its dynamics. On the distinct themes between tawhid and rationalism there are several contrasting views. Imam Ghazzali wrote (trans. Buchman, 1998, p. 107) on the tawhidi contrariness to rationalism: The rational faculties of the unbelievers are inverted, and so the rest of their faculties of perception and these faculties help one another in leading them astray. Hence, a similitude of them is like a man ‘in a fathomless ocean covered by a wave, which is a wave above which are clouds, darkness piled one upon the other’. (Qur’an, 24:40) Recently Buchanan and Tullock (1999) wrote on the neoliberal order of rationalism, upon which all of the so-called ‘Islamic economic and sociopolitical paradigm’ rests: Concomitant with methodological individualism as a component of the hard core is the postulate of rational choice, a postulate that is shared over all research programs in economics. (p. 391) Regarding the Occidental world-system, Buchanan and Tullock (ibid., p. 390) write on the nature of liberalism in constitutional economics. For constitutional economics, the foundational position is summarized in methodological individualism. Unless those who would be participants in the scientific dialogue are willing to locate the exercise in the choice calculus of individuals, qua individuals, there can be no departure from the starting gate. The autonomous individual is a sine qua non for any initiation of serious inquiry in the research program.
Slide 54: 36 Handbook of Islamic banking In respect of speculative rationalism of theological inquiry, Ghazzali (Buchman, 1998, p. 107) wrote (edited): On your impotence [to know] becomes manifest, then [one must point out that] there are among people those who hold that the realities of divine matters are not attained through rational reflection – indeed, that it is not within human power to know them. For this reason, the giver of the law has said, ‘Think of God’s creation and do not think on God’s essence.’ In the end, the tawhidi epistemological and ontological precepts present the ontic economic and social phenomena as integral and complementary parts of the whole of socioscientific reality. In the case of Islamic banking as a financial institution, the conception of money in Islam together with the embedded views of social, economic and institutional perspectives of development as sustainability and wellbeing are to be studied according to the principle and logic of complementariness. The emerging study of such complex and rich interaction in the light of tawhid and its learning dynamics rejects the study of the economic, financial, social and institutional domains as segmented parts within dichotomous fields despite what the mainstream analytics and neoliberal reasoning prompts. In the light of the arguments cited in this chapter the development of economic and social thought in the contemporary Muslim mindset has been a sorry replay of the dichotomous divide of Islamic scholasticism. It is high time to reconstruct, and reform and return to the tawhidi foundational worldview as enunciated by the Qur’an and the sunna through the shuratic process of discourse, participation and creative evolution in the scheme of all things. Bibliography AbuSulayman, A.A. (1988), ‘The Islamization of knowledge: a new approach toward reform on contemporary knowledge’, Proceedings & Selected Papers of the Second Conference on Islamization of Knowledge, Herndon, VA: International Institute of Islamic Thought, pp. 91–118. Ahmad, K. (2004), ‘The challenge of global capitalism – an Islamic perspective,’ in J.H. Dunning (ed.), Making Globalization Good, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Al-Faruqi, I.R. (1982), Islamization of Knowledge: General Principles and Workplan, Herndon, VA: International Institute of Islamic Thought. Al-Faruqi, I.R. (1988), ‘Islamization of knowledge: problems, principles, and prospective’, Proceedings & Selected Papers of the Second Conference on Islamization of Knowledge, Herndon, VA: International Institute of Islamic Thought, pp. 13–64. Aristotle, trans. J.E.C. Welldon (1987), The Nicomachean Ethics, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books. Asad, M. (1987), This Law of Ours, Gibraltar: Dar al-Andalus. Atiyeh, G.R. (1985), Al-Kindi: The Philosopher of the Arabs, Islamabad, Pakistan: The Islamic Research Institute. Bashir, A.H. and A.F. Darrat (1992), ‘Equity participation contracts and investment’, American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, 9 (2), 219–32. Buchanan, J.M. (1999), ‘The domain of constitutional economics’, The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan, Vol. 1, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. Buchanan, J.M. and G. Tullock (1999), ‘Individual rationality in social choice’, The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan, Vol. 1, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. Chapra, M.U. (1992), Islam and the Economic Challenge, Leicester, UK: Islamic Foundation & Herndon, NY: International Institute of Islamic Thought. Chapra, M.U. (1993), Islam and Economic Development, Islamabad, Pakistan: International Institute of Islamic Thought and Islamic Research Institute. Chittick, W.C. (1989), Sufi Path of Knowledge, Albany, NY: The State University of New York Press. Choudhury, M.A. (1998), ‘Human resource development in the Islamic perspective,’ in M.A. Choudhury (ed.), Studies in Islamic Social Sciences, London: Macmillan and New York: St Martin’s. Choudhury, M.A. (1999), ‘Resource mobilization and development goals for Islamic banks’, Proceedings of the
Slide 55: Development of Islamic economic and social thought 37 Second Harvard University Forum on Islamic Finance: Islamic Finance into the 21st Century, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Islamic Finance and Investment Program, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University, pp. 31–50. Choudhury, M.A. (2004a), The Islamic World-System, a Study in Polity–Market Interaction, London: Routledge Curzon. Choudhury, M.A. (2004b), ‘Learning systems’, Kybernetes: International Journal of Systems & Cybernetics, 33 (1), 26–47. Choudhury, M.A. (ed.) (2005), Money and Real Economy, Leeds, New York, New Delhi: Wisdom House Academic Publication. Coase, R.H. (1960), ‘The problem of social cost’, Journal of Law and Economics, 3, 1–45. Einstein, A. (1954), ‘Relativity and the problem of space’, in A. Einstein (ed.), Relativity, London: Methuen, pp. 135–57. Friedman, M. (1989), ‘Quantity theory of money’, in J. Eatwell, M. Milgate and P. Newman (eds), The New Palgrave: Money, New York: W.W. Norton. [Imam] Al-Ghazzali, trans. D. Buchman (1998), The Niche of Lights, Provo, Utah: Brigham University Press. [Imam] Al-Ghazzali, trans. F. Karim (undated), Ihya Ulum-Id-Din, vol. 1, Lahore, Pakistan: Shah Muhammad Ashraf Press. [Imam] Al-Ghazzali, trans. M.E. Marmura (1997), The Incoherence of the Philosophers, Provo, Utah: Brigham University Press. Hegel, G.W.F., trans. J. Sibree (1956), The Philosophy of History, New York: Dover Publications. Ibn Khaldun, trans. F. Rozenthal (1958), Muqaddimah, an Introduction to History, 3 vols, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. [Imam] Ibn Taimiyyah, trans. M. Holland (1983), Al-Hisbah fil Islam (Public Duties in Islam: The Institution of the Hisba), Leicester: The Islamic Foundation. Jalbani, G.N. (1967), Teachings of Shah Waliyullah of Delhi, Lahore, Pakistan: Shah Muhammad Ashraf Press. Mahdi, M. (1964), Ibn Khaldun’s Philosophy of History, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Masud, M.K. (1994), Shatibi’s Theory of Meaning, Islamabad, Pakistan: Islamic Research Institute, International Islamic University. Metwally, M. (1991), ‘The humanomics of a Muslim consumer’, Humanomics, 7 (3), 63–72. Nabi, Malik B., trans. A.B. Kirkary (1983), The Qur’anic Phenomenon, Indianapolis: American Trust Publications. Naqvi, S.N.H (1994), ‘The problem of abolishing interest: I’, in S.N.H. Naqvi (ed.), Islam, Economics, and Society, London: Kegan Paul International. Nasr, S.H. (1992), ‘The Gnostic tradition’, in S.H. Nasr (ed.), Science and Civilization in Islam, New York: Barnes & Noble. Nitzan, J. and S. Bichler (2000), ‘Capital accumulation: breaking the dualism of “economics” and “politics” ’, in R. Palan (ed.), Global Political Economy, London: Routledge. Qadir, C.A. (1988), Philosophy and Science in the Islamic World, London: Routledge. Rahman, F. (1958), Prophecy in Islam, Philosophy and Orthodoxy, London: George Allen and Unwin. Resnick, S.A. and R.D. Wolff (1987), ‘Marxian epistemology: the critique of economic determinism,’ in S.A. Resnick and R.D. Wolff (eds), Knowledge and Class, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Romer, P.M. (1986), ‘Increasing returns and long-run growth’, Journal of Political Economy, 94, 1002–37. Sen, A. (1990), ‘Economic judgements and moral philosophy’, in A. Sen (ed.), On Ethics and Economics, Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd. [Imam] Shatibi, trans. Abdallah Draz (undated), Muwafaqat al-Usul al-S hari’ah, Cairo, Egypt: Al-Maktabah al-Tijariyyah al-Kubra. Siddiqui, M.N. (undated), Partnership and Profit-Sharing in Islamic Law, Leicester: The Islamic Foundation. Siddiqui, M.N. (1979), ‘Tawhid: the concept and the process’, in K. Ahmad and Z.I. Ansari (eds), Islamic Perspectives, London: Islamic Foundation. Smith, A. (ed. E. Cannan) (1976), An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Staniland, M. (1985), ‘The fall and rise of political economy’, in M. Staniland, What is Political Economy? A Study of Social Theory and Underdevelopment, New Haven: Yale University Press. Ventelou, B. (2005), ‘Economic thought on the eve of the General Theory’, in B. Ventelou (ed.), Millennial Keynes, London: M.E. Sharpe. Walras, L., trans. W. Jaffe (1954), Elements of Pure Economics, Homewood: Richard D. Irwin. Walzer, R. (1985), Al-Farabi on the Perfect State, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Slide 56: 3 Islamic critique of conventional financing Latifa M. Algaoud and Mervyn K. Lewis The significance of Islamic law By definition, an Islamic bank abides by Islamic law, the shari’a (formally shari’a Islami’iah but generally abbreviated to shari’ah or shari’a). The literal meaning of the Arabic word shari’a is ‘the way to the source of life’ and, in a technical sense, it is now used to refer to a legal system in keeping with the code of behaviour called for by the Holy Qur’an and the hadith (the authentic tradition). Muslims cannot, in good faith, compartmentalize their behaviour into religious and secular dimensions, and their actions are always bound by the shari’a. Islamic law thus embodies an encompassing set of duties and practices including worship, prayer, manners and morals, marriage, inheritance, crime and commercial transactions. The unique validity of Islamic law comes from its being the manifested will of God, who at a certain point in history revealed it to mankind through his prophet Muhammad; as such it does not rely on the authority of any earthly lawmaker. Its origins, in addition to the Holy Qur’an, are to be found in the judgments given by the Prophet himself, reflecting the application of rules, principles and injunctions already enunciated in the Holy Qur’an. As the centuries passed, these rules grew into a complete system of law, both public and private, as well as prescriptions for the practice of religion. Just as Islam regulates and influences all other spheres of life, so it also governs the conduct of business and commerce. The basic principles of the law are laid down in the four root transactions of (1) sales (bay), transfer of the ownership or corpus of property for a consideration; (2) hire (ijâra), transfer of the usufruct (right to use) of property for a consideration; (3) gift (hiba), gratuitous transfer of the corpus of property; and (4) loan (ariyah), gratuitous transfer of the usufruct of property. These basic principles are then applied to the various specific transactions of, for example, pledge, deposit, guarantee, agency, assignment, land tenancy, waqf foundations (religious or charitable bodies) and partnerships, which play an important role in Islamic financing and form the backbone of Islamic banking practices. As the preceding paragraph indicates, there are strict rules applying to finance under Islamic law, and it is to these that we now turn. In order to conform to Islamic rules and norms, five religious features, which are well documented in the literature, must be followed in investment behaviour (Lewis and Algaoud, 2001): riba is prohibited in all transactions; business and investment are undertaken on the basis of halal (legal, permitted) activities; c. maysir (gambling) is prohibited and transactions should be free from gharar (speculation or unreasonable uncertainty); d. zakat is to be paid by the bank to benefit society; e. all activities should be in line with Islamic principles, with a special shari’a board to supervise and advise the bank on the propriety of transactions. 38 a. b.
Slide 57: Islamic critique of conventional financing 39 Islamic financing rules The five elements mentioned above give Islamic banking and finance its distinctive religious identity, and we now briefly explain each in turn. Riba Perhaps the most far-reaching and controversial aspect of Islamic economics, in terms of its implications from a Western perspective, is the prohibition of interest (riba). The payment of riba and the taking of interest as occurs in a conventional banking system is explicitly prohibited by the Holy Qur’an, and thus investors must be compensated by other means. It is further stated in the Holy Qur’an that those who disregard the prohibition of interest are at war with God and His Prophet Muhammad. Haram/halal A strict code of ‘ethical investments’ operates for Islamic financial activities. Hence Islamic banks cannot finance activities or items forbidden (that is, haram) in Islam, such as trade of alcoholic beverages and pork meat. Furthermore, as the fulfilment of material needs assures a religious freedom for Muslims, Islamic banks are encouraged to give priority to the production of essential goods which satisfy the needs of the majority of the Muslim community. As a guide, participation in the production and marketing of luxury activities, israf wa traf, is considered as unacceptable from a religious viewpoint when Muslim societies suffer from a lack of essential goods and services such as food, clothing, shelter, health and education. Gharar/maysir Prohibition of games of chance is explicit in the Holy Qur’an (S5: 90–91). It uses the word maysir for games of hazard, derived from usr (ease and convenience), implying that the gambler strives to amass wealth without effort, and the term is now applied generally to all gambling activities. Gambling in all its forms is forbidden in Islamic jurisprudence. Along with explicit forms of gambling, Islamic law also forbids any business activities which contain any element of gambling (Siddiqi, 1985). The shari’a determined that, in the interests of fair, ethical dealing in commutative contracts, unjustified enrichment through games of pure chance should be prohibited. Another feature condemned by Islam is economic transactions involving elements of speculation, gharar (literally ‘hazard’). While riba and maysir are condemned in the Holy Qur’an, condemnation of gharar is supported by ahadith. In business terms, gharar means to undertake a venture blindly without sufficient knowledge or to undertake an excessively risky transaction, although minor uncertainties can be permitted when there is some necessity. In a general context, the unanimous view of the jurists held that, in any transaction, by failing or neglecting to define any of the essential pillars of contract relating to the consideration or measure of the object, the parties undertake a risk which is not indispensable for them. This kind of risk was deemed unacceptable and tantamount to speculation because of its inherent uncertainty. Speculative transactions with these characteristics are therefore prohibited. This prohibition applies in a number of circumstances, such as when the seller is not in a position to hand over the goods to the buyer or when the subject matter of the sale is incapable of acquisition, for example the sale of fruit which is not yet ripened, or fish or
Slide 58: 40 Handbook of Islamic banking birds not yet caught; that is, short-selling. Speculative business, like buying goods or shares at low prices and selling them for higher prices in the future, is considered to be illicit (Mannan [1970] 1986, p. 289). Gharar applies also for investments such as trading in futures on the stock market; indeed, gharar is present in all future (mudhaf) sales and, according to the consensus of scholars, a gharar contract is null and void (batil). The position of jurisprudence on a future sale is explained by Sheikh Dhareer (1997): In this variety of sale the offer (to sell something) is shifted from the present to a future date; for instance, one person would say to another ‘I sell you this house of mine at such a price as of the beginning of next year’ and the other replies: ‘I accept’. The majority of jurists are of the view that the sale contract cannot accept clauses of this nature; if the sale is shifted to a future date the contract becomes invalid . . . . . . gharar in a future contract lies in the possible lapse of the interest of either party and to his consent with the contract when the time set therein comes. If someone buys something by a ‘mudhaf’ contract and his circumstances change or the market changes bringing its price down at the time set for fulfilment of contract, he will undoubtedly be averse to its fulfilment and will regret entering into it. Indeed, the object in question may itself change and the two parties may dispute over it. Thus, we can say that gharar infiltrates the mudhaf contract from the viewpoint of uncertainty over the time, that is, when the parties conclude the contract they do not know whether they will still be in agreement and have continued interest in that contract when it falls due. (pp. 18–19) The rejection of gharar has led to the condemnation of some or all types of insurance by Muslim scholars, since insurance involves an unknown risk. Further, an element of maysir arises as a consequence of the presence of gharar. This has led to the development of Takaful (cooperative) insurance, considered in Chapter 24 below. Zakat According to the Holy Qur’an, God owns all wealth, and private property is seen as a trust from God. Property has a social function in Islam, and must be used for the benefit of society. Moreover, there is a divine duty to work. Social justice is the result of organizing society on Islamic social and legal precepts, including employment of productive labour and equal opportunities, such that everyone can use all of their abilities in work and gain just rewards from that work effort. Justice and equality in Islam means that people should have equal opportunity and does not imply that they should be equal either in poverty or in riches (Chapra, 1985). However, it is incumbent on the Islamic state to guarantee a subsistence level to its citizens, in the form of a minimum level of food, clothing, shelter, medical care and education (Holy Qur’an 58: 11). The major purpose here is to moderate social variances in Islamic society, and to enable the poor to lead a normal, spiritual and material life in dignity and contentment. A mechanism for the redistribution of income and wealth is inherent in Islam, so that every Muslim is guaranteed a fair standard of living, nisab. Zakat is the most important instrument for the redistribution of wealth. This almsgiving is a compulsory levy, and constitutes one of the five basic tenets of Islam. The generally accepted amount of the zakat is a one-fortieth (2.5 per cent) assessment on assets held for a full year (after a small initial exclusion, nisab), the purpose of which is to transfer income from the wealthy to the needy.
Slide 59: Islamic critique of conventional financing 41 Consequently, in countries where zakat is not collected by the state, every Islamic bank or financial institution has to establish a zakat fund for collecting the funds and distributing them exclusively to the poor directly or through other religious institutions. This religious levy is applied to the initial capital of the bank, on the reserves and on the profits. Shari’a board In order to ensure that the practices and activities of Islamic banks do not contradict the Islamic ethics, Islamic banks are expected to establish a Religious Supervisory Board. This board consists of Muslim jurists, who act as independent Shari’a auditors and advisers to the banks, and are involved in vetting all new contracts, auditing existing contracts, and approving new product developments. Also the Shari’a Board oversees the collection and distribution of zakat. This additional layer of governance is quite different from that for a conventional bank (Algaoud and Lewis, 1999). The prohibition of riba The prohibition of riba is mentioned in four different verses in the Holy Qur’an. These are Surah al-Rum (Chapter 30, verse 39); Surah al-Nisa (Chapter 4, verse 161); Surah alImran (Chapter 3, verses 130–32); Surah al-Baqarah (Chapter 2, verses 275–81). The verses, as given below, are from the English translation of the Holy Qur’an revised and edited by The Presidency of Islamic Researches, 1413: That which you give in usury For increase through the property Of (other) people, will have No increase with Allah: But that which you give For charity, seeking The Countenance of Allah. (Surah al-Rum, 30:39) That they took usury, Though they were forbidden: And that they devoured Men’s wealth wrongfully; – We have prepared for those Among them who reject Faith A grievous chastisement. (Surah al-Nisa, 4:161) O ye who believe! Devour not Usury, Doubled and multiplied; But fear Allah; that Ye may (really) prosper. (Surah al-Imran, 3:130) Those who devour usury Will not stand except As stands one whom The Satan by his touch Hath driven to madness. That is because they say: ‘Trade is like usury,’ But Allah hath permitted trade
Slide 60: 42 Handbook of Islamic banking And forbidden usury. Those who after receiving Admonition from their Lord, Desist, shall be pardoned For the past; their case Is for Allah (to judge); But those who repeat (The offence) are Companions Of the Fire: they will Abide therein (for ever). Allah will deprive Usury of all blessing, But will give increase For deeds of charity: For He loveth not Any ungrateful Sinner. O ye who believe! Fear Allah, and give up What remains of your demand For usury, if ye are Indeed believers. (Surah al-Baqarah, 2:275–8) The first of the verses quoted above emphasizes that interest deprives wealth of God’s blessings. The second condemns it, placing interest in juxtaposition with wrongful appropriation of property belonging to others. The third enjoins Muslims to stay clear of interest for the sake of their own welfare. The fourth establishes a clear distinction between interest and trade, urging Muslims, first, to take only the principal sum and second, to forgo even this sum if the borrower is unable to repay. The ban on interest is also cited in unequivocal terms in the hadith or sunna. Quite clearly, this prohibition is central. Islamic finance, like Islamic commercial law in general, is dominated by the doctrine of riba. It is important that we understand the nature of, and reasons for, this prohibition. Nature of riba A general principle of Islamic law, based on a number of passages in the Holy Qur’an, is that unjustified enrichment, or ‘receiving a monetary advantage without giving a countervalue’, is forbidden on ethical grounds. According to Schacht (1964), riba is simply a special case of unjustified enrichment or, in the terms of the Holy Qur’an, consuming (that is, appropriating for one’s own use) the property of others for no good reason, which is prohibited. Riba can be defined formally as ‘a monetary advantage without a countervalue which has been stipulated in favour of one of the two contracting parties in an exchange of two monetary values’ (p. 145). The literal meaning of the Arabic word riba is ‘increase’, ‘excess’, ‘growth’ or ‘addition’. Saeed (1996, p. 20) notes that the root r-b-w from which riba is derived, is used in the Holy Qur’an 20 times. The root r-b-w has the sense in the Holy Qur’an of ‘growing’, ‘increasing’, ‘rising’, ‘swelling’, ‘raising’ and ‘being big and great’. It is also used in the sense of ‘hillock’. These usages appear to have one meaning in common, that of ‘increase’, in a qualitative or quantitative sense.
Slide 61: Islamic critique of conventional financing 43 The actual meaning of riba has been debated since the earliest Muslim times. Umar, the second Caliph, regretted that the Prophet died before having given a more detailed account of what constituted riba. Amongst Westerners, the term ‘usury’ is now generally reserved for only ‘exorbitant’ or ‘excessive’ interest. But the evidence from the Holy Qur’an would seem to be that all interest is to be condemned: ‘But if ye repent, ye shall have your capital sums [that is principal]’ (S2: 279). On this basis, most Islamic scholars have argued that riba embraces not only usury, but all interest (riba). This is reminiscent of arguments by medieval Western scholars that all interest is usurious (see Chapter 4 below). Riba comes from the root rab-a meaning to increase (or exceed), while rib.h comes from the root rabi.ha meaning to gain (or profit). Certainly the above verse makes it clear that profit is not a form of rib-a, and Islamic banking rests on this foundation (Ahmad, 1982, p. 478). The concept of riba is not limited to interest. Two forms of riba are identified in Islamic law. They are riba al-qarud, which relates to usury involving loans, and riba al-buyu, which relates to usury involving trade. The latter can take two forms. Riba al-fadl involves an exchange of unequal qualities or quantities of the same commodity simultaneously, whilst riba al-nisa involves the non-simultaneous exchange of equal qualities and quantities of the same commodity. The prohibition applies to objects which can be measured or weighed and which, in addition, belong to the same species. Forbidden are both an excess in quantity and a delay in performance. Figure 3.1, based on El Diwany (2003), illustrates the forms of riba that are defined in Islam. Riba al-qarud, the usury of loans, involves a charge on a loan arising with the passage of time, in other words a loan at interest, and is sometimes referred to as riba al-nasia, the usury of waiting or delay. It arises where a user of another’s wealth, in any form, is contracted by the other to pay a specified increase in addition to the principal amount in repayment. If the increase is predetermined as a specified amount at the outset of the transaction, however this increase occurs, then the loan becomes a usurious one. The prohibition has been extended to all loans and debts where an increase accrues to the creditor. It is this last form, riba al-nasia, in which money is exchanged for money with deferment, that forms the basis of the Western financial system, and is so abhorrent to Riba Riba al-qarud Riba al-buyu (Riba al-nasia) Source: El Diwany (2003). Riba al-fadl Riba al-nisa Figure 3.1 Different forms of riba
Slide 62: 44 Handbook of Islamic banking Muslims. In the conventional banking system, financial intermediation takes place with lending, and the time value of money is built into interest payments made by the borrower. From an Islamic viewpoint, this practice is riba, which is unequivocally condemned. That all riba is banned absolutely by the Holy Qur’an, the central source of Islamic law, is apparent from the verses reproduced earlier. Similarly, in the ahadith, the next most authoritative source, the Prophet Muhammad condemns the one who takes it, the one who pays it, the one who writes the agreement for it and the witnesses to the agreement. Nevertheless, despite these clear injunctions, some scholars have questioned the circumstances surrounding the ban in the Holy Qur’an and have wondered whether the objection to riba applies (or ought to apply) with equal force today. Fazlur Rahman (1964), in particular, argues as a dissenting view that there has been a disregard of what riba was historically, why the Holy Qur’an banned it so categorically, and the function of bank interest in a modern economy. Revisionist views The essence of Rahman’s position is that sunna is not fixed, but dynamic. The prohibition on riba clearly does extend back to the Holy Qur’an and the Prophet, but the particular definition given to riba, as formalized by earlier generations and enshrined in the hadith – namely that it represents any amount of interest – need not be applied. What is needed instead, according to Rahman, is to study hadith in a situational context in order to understand the true meaning and extract the real moral value. Rather than apply ahadith directly, these should be studied for clues to the spirit of the injunction. On this basis, it might be argued that the interest prohibition relates only to exorbitant interest rates and not to all forms of interest. The reference quoted earlier from the Holy Qur’an to riba ‘doubled and multiplied’ (S3: 130) may reflect the fact that at the rise of Islam the practice of lending money was being exploited so as to reap excessive gains from the interest charged on loans. If borrowers could not meet the due date by which to return the capital borrowed, the lenders would double and then redouble the interest rates, thus reducing the debtor to penury. Such practices were deemed intimidatory, unjust and against social and economic welfare. The Islamic interdiction of riba therefore fell into the net of social reform instituted by the Prophet upon pre-Islamic practices. Certainly, the Islamic code urges leniency towards debtors, and the Holy Qur’an specifies no punishment for unpaid debts. Similarly, the characteristics of Arab society at the time should be recalled – a largely agricultural, partly nomadic, civilization living as settled communities in walled towns (to protect themselves from marauding Bedouins), linked by caravan routes to each other and Asia Minor. In such an environment, the need for borrowing often arose, not from normal commercial expansion, but from misfortune: famine, crop failure, loss of a caravan and so on. To charge interest to kin, under such circumstances, would be to violate tribal loyalty. Since crop failure and so on may occur to anyone, through no fault of their own, a system of lending freely without interest could be seen as a sort of mutual-help insurance system. Drawing on some of these points, modernists have raised a number of issues about the definition of riba. Some have claimed that Islam has prohibited ‘exploitative’ or ‘usurious’ riba rather than interest per se, thereby allowing for a ‘fair’ return on loanable funds (Rida, 1959). Others, like the Syrian Doualibi, would differentiate between ‘consumption’ loans and ‘production’ loans on the grounds that the verses in the Holy Qur’an relating
Slide 63: Islamic critique of conventional financing 45 to riba go hand-in-hand with injunctions to alleviate the condition of the poor, needy and weaker sections of the community (cited in Abu Zahra, 1970). There has also been advanced the view that the prohibition of riba covers only individuals, not the giving or taking of interest among corporate entities, such as companies, banks or governments. Some, such as Tantawi, the Sheikh of al-Azhar in Cairo, even argue that bank interest is a sharing of the bank’s commercial profit and, being a profit share, is therefore permissible. This view, like the other modernist views, has been almost unanimously rejected. Also rejected have been those arguments that see fixed interest rates to be haram and variable interest rates halal. It is said that, if the rate of interest is allowed to vary, this is permissible since the actual rate of return is not fixed in advance. While it is true that the absolute amount of interest under a floating rate contract is not fixed, the formula is specified (for example, LIBOR plus a set spread) and in this sense the payment is predetermined. In effect, both fixed and variable loan contracts require interest to be paid and only the method of determining the amount of interest differs. ‘Zeros’ have also been rejected. When these were first introduced, some commentators argued that the zero-coupon bonds are ‘Islamic’ because no interest is paid during their lifetime. A bond is a ‘zero coupon bond’ if no coupons (that is, interest instalments) are due to the bondholder during the life of that bond. Investors therefore are only prepared to buy zero-coupon bonds at a price that is below face value so that, when the bond matures, the difference between the purchase price and the face value is realized as a gain of waiting. Again, interest is paid; it is just that it is all paid at the maturity date instead of in instalments over the life of the bond. Thus, despite the modernist views on the meaning of riba and how it should justifiably be defined, the dominant position remains intact. One of the most important documents on Islamic banking, the CII (Council of Islamic Ideology) Report (1983), is explicit: ‘There is complete unanimity among all schools of thought in Islam that the term riba stands for interest in all its types and forms’ (p. 7). Razi’s five reasons This leaves the question: why? Razi ([1872]1938), a Persian/Arab scholar who died in 1209, set forth some of the reasons as to the prohibition of riba: 1. That riba is but the exacting of another’s property without any countervalue while according to the saying of the Prophet a man’s property is unlawful to the other as his blood. It is argued that riba should be lawful to the creditor in return for the use of money and the profit which the debtor derives from it. Had this been in the possession of the creditor he would have earned profit by investing it in some business. But it should be noted that profit in business is uncertain while the excess amount which the creditor gets towards interest is certain. Hence insistence upon a sum which is certain in return for what is uncertain is but harm done to the debtor. That riba is forbidden because it prevents men from taking part in active professions. The moneyed man, if he gets income through riba, depends upon this easy means and abandons the idea of taking pains and earning his livelihood by way of trade or industry, which serves to retard the progress and prosperity of the people. That the contract of riba leads to a strained relationship between man and man. If it is made illegal there will be no difficulty in lending and getting back what has been 2. 3.
Slide 64: 46 Handbook of Islamic banking lent, but if it is made legal, people, in order to gratify their desires, will borrow even at an exorbitant rate of interest, which results in friction and strife and strips society of its goodliness. That the contract of riba is a contrivance to enable the rich to take in excess of the principal which is unlawful and against justice and equity. As a consequence of it, the rich grow still richer and the poor still poorer. That the illegality of riba is proved by the text of the Holy Qur’an and it is not necessary that men should know the reasons for it. We have to discard it as illegal though we are unaware of the reasons (vol. 2, p. 531). 4. 5. For most scholars the last is sufficient. The meaning and scope of riba and its grave nature have been brought to light in the Holy Qur’an (S2: 225). Its prohibition cannot be questioned, as the verse ‘God permitteth trading and forbideth riba’ is quite clear. When the text is clear on this point there is no need for further clarification. Because the Holy Qur’an has stated that only the principal should be taken, there is no alternative but to interpret riba according to that wording. Therefore the existence or otherwise of injustice in a loan transaction is irrelevant. Whatever the circumstances are, the lender has no right to receive any increase over and above the principal. The basis of Islamic financing In banning riba, Islam seeks to establish a society based upon fairness and justice (Holy Qur’an 2:239). A loan provides the lender with a fixed return irrespective of the outcome of the borrower’s venture. It is much fairer to have a sharing of the profits and losses. Fairness in this context has two dimensions: the supplier of capital possesses a right to reward, but this reward should be commensurate with the risk and effort involved and thus be governed by the return on the individual project for which funds are supplied (Presley, 1988). Hence what is forbidden in Islam is the predetermined return. The sharing of profit is legitimate and the acceptability of that practice has provided the foundation for the development and implementation of Islamic banking. In Islam, the owner of capital can legitimately share the profits made by the entrepreneur. What makes profitsharing permissible in Islam, while interest is not, is that in the case of the former it is only the profit-sharing ratio, not the rate of return itself, that is predetermined. A banking system in which interest is not allowed may appear strange to those accustomed to conventional Western banking practices. In this respect, it is necessary to distinguish between the expressions ‘rate of interest’ and ‘rate of return’. Whereas Islam clearly forbids the former, it not only permits, but rather encourages, trade and the profit motive. The difference is that in trade there is always the risk of loss or low returns. What is eschewed is the guaranteed rate of interest: the pre-agreed, fixed return or amount for the use of money (Khan, 1986). In the interest-free system sought by adherents to Muslim principles, people are able to earn a return on their money only by subjecting themselves to the risk involved in profit sharing. According to the Hanafi school, profit can be earned in three ways. The first is to use one’s capital. The second is to employ one’s labour. The third is to employ one’s judgment, which amounts to taking a risk. Al-Kásâni, the Hanafi jurist, states: ‘The rule, in our view, is that entitlement to profit is either due to wealth (mal) or work (‘amal) or by bearing a liability for loss (daman)’ ([1910]1968, vol. 7, p. 3545).
Slide 65: Islamic critique of conventional financing 47 With the use of interest rates in financial transactions excluded, Islamic banks are expected to undertake operations only on the basis of profit-and-loss sharing (PLS) arrangements or other acceptable modes of financing. Gafoor (1995) considers the concept of profit-and-loss sharing to be of recent origin: The earliest references to the reorganisation of banking on the basis of profit-sharing rather than interest are found in Anwar Qureshi ([1946]1991), Naiem Siddiqi (1948) and Ahmad (1952) in the late forties, followed by a more elaborate exposition by Mawdudi in 1950 (1961) . . . They have all recognised the need for commercial banks and the evil of interest in that enterprise, and have proposed a banking system based on the concept of Mudarabha – profit and loss sharing. (pp. 37–8) But, of course, the idea has earlier origins: This situation was envisaged by Islam 1400 years ago. The Islamic law asserted that there should be no pre-agreed rates of interest on loans. Uzair ([1955]1978) says that Islam emphasises agreed ratios of profit sharing rather than fixed and predetermined percentages. Instead, the transactions should be on a profit and loss sharing basis. (Siddiqui, 1994, p. 28) Under Islamic commercial law, partnerships and all other forms of business organization are set up primarily for a single objective: the sharing of profits through joint participation. These techniques are explored in the following chapter. References Abu Zahra, Muhammad (1970), Buhuth fi al-Riba, Kuwait: Dar al-Buhuth al-‘Ilmiyya. Ahmad, S.M. (1952), Economics of Islam, Lahore: Institute of Islamic Culture. Ahmad, I. (1982), ‘Islamic Social Thought’, in W. Block and I. Hexham (eds), Religion, Economics and Social Thought: Proceedings of an International Symposium, Vancouver, BC: The Fraser Institute, pp. 465–91. Algaoud, L.M. and M.K. Lewis (1999), ‘Corporate governance in Islamic banking: the case of Bahrain’, International Journal of Business Studies, 7(1), 56–86. Al-Kásâni, Abu Bakr ibn Mas’ud ([1910] 1968), (d.587/1191), Bada’I’ al-Sana’I fi Tartib al-Shara’i’, 10 vols, Cairo: Al-Galia Press. Chapra, M.U. (1985), Towards a Just Monetary System, Leicester: Islamic Foundation. Council of Islamic Ideology (Pakistan) (1983), ‘Elimination of interest from the economy’, in Z. Ahmed, M. Iqbal and M.F. Khan (eds), Money and Banking in Islam, International Centre for Research in Islamic Economics, Jeddah and Institute of Policy Studies, Islamabad, pp. 103–211. Dhareer, Al Siddiq Mohammad Al-Ameen (1997), Al-Gharar in Contracts and its Effects on Contemporary Transactions, Jeddah: Islamic Development Bank, Islamic Research and Training Institute. El Diwany, Tarek (2003), The Problem with Interest, London: Kreatoc Ltd. Gafoor, Abdul A.L.M. (1995), Interest-free Commercial Banking, Groningen, The Netherlands: Apptec Publications. Khan, M.S. (1986), ‘Islamic interest-free banking: a theoretical analysis’, IMF Staff Papers, 33 (1), 1–25. Lewis, M.K. and L.M. Algaoud (2001), Islamic Banking, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar. Mannan, M.A. ([1970] 1986), Islamic Economics: Theories and Practice (originally Lahore: Islamic Publications, 1970), Sevenoaks, Kent: Hodder and Stoughton. Mawdudi, Sayyed Abul A’la ([1950]1961), Sud (Interest), Lahore: Islamic Publications. Presley, J.H. (1988), Directory of Islamic Financial Institutions, London: Croom Helm. Qureshi, Anwar Iqbal ([1946]1991), Islam and the Theory of Interest, Lahore: Sh. Md. Ashraf. Rahman, Fazlur G. (1964), ‘Riba and Interest’, Islamic Studies, 3 (1), 1–43. Razi, Muhammad Fakr al-Din ([1872]1938), Mafatih al-Ghayb, known as al-Tafsir al-Kabir, Bulaq Cairo: Dar Ibya al-Kutub al-Bahiyya. Rida, Muhammad Rashid (1959), al-Riba wa al-Mu’amalat fi al-Islam, Cairo: Maktabat al-Qahira. Saeed, A. (1996), Islamic Banking and Interest, Leiden: E.J. Brill. Schacht, J. (1964), An Introduction to Islamic Law, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Slide 66: 48 Handbook of Islamic banking Siddiqi, M.N. (1985), Insurance in an Islamic Economy, Leicester: The Islamic Foundation. Siddiqi, Naiem (1948), ‘Islami usual par banking’ (Banking according to Islamic principles), paper in the Urdu monthly, Chiragh-e-Rah (Karachi), 1 (11 & 12), Nov. & Dec., 24–8 and 60–64. Siddiqui, S.H. (1994), Islamic Banking: Genesis, Rationale, Evaluation and Review, Prospects and Challenges, Karachi: Royal Book Company. Uzair, M. ([1955] 1978), An Outline of Interest-Free Banking, Karachi: Royal Book Company.
Slide 67: 4 Profit-and-loss sharing contracts in Islamic finance Abbas Mirakhor and Iqbal Zaidi Profit-sharing contracts Islamic finance has grown rapidly over the last several years, in terms both of the volume of lending and of the range of financial products that are available at institutional and retail levels. The main characteristic of these financial instruments is that they are compliant with the shari’a – the Islamic legal system.1 Since the Islamic financial system differs in important ways from the conventional interest-based lending system, there is a need to devote more attention to the particular issues raised by Islamic finance. This chapter discusses some key insights from an agency theory perspective, and illustrates how the insights from this literature can be employed to provide a framework for the design of Islamic financial contracts and control mechanisms for the regulation of Islamic financial institutions. The agency theory concepts of incentives, outcome uncertainty, risk and information systems are particularly germane to the discussion of compensation and control problems in Islamic financial contracting.2 The main difference between an Islamic or interest-free banking system and the conventional interest-based banking system is that, under the latter, the interest rate is either fixed in advance or is a simple linear function of some other benchmark rate, whereas, in the former, the profits and losses on a physical investment are shared between the creditor and the borrower according to a formula that reflects their respective levels of participation. In Islamic finance, interest-bearing contracts are replaced by a return-bearing contract, which often takes the form of partnerships. Islamic banks provide savers with financial instruments that are akin to equity called mudaraba and musharaka (discussed below). In these lending arrangements, profits are shared between the investors and the bank on a predetermined basis.3 The profit-and-loss sharing concept implies a direct concern with regard to the profitability of the physical investment on the part of the creditor (the Islamic bank). Needless to say, the conventional bank is also concerned about the profitability of the project, because of concerns about potential default on the loan. However, the conventional bank puts the emphasis on receiving the interest payments according to some set time intervals and, so long as this condition is being met, the bank’s own profitability is not directly affected by whether the project has a particularly high or a rather low rate of return. In contrast to the interest-based system, the Islamic bank has to focus on the return on the physical investment, because its own profitability is directly linked to the real rate of return. The direct links between the payment to the creditor and the profitability of the investment project is of considerable importance to the entrepreneur. Most importantly, profitsharing contracts have superior properties for risk management, because the payment the entrepreneur has to make to the creditor is reduced in bad states of nature. Also, if the entrepreneur experiences temporary debt-servicing difficulties in the interest-based system, say, on account of a short-run adverse demand shock, there is the risk of a magnification effect; that is, his credit channels might dry up because of lenders overreacting 49
Slide 68: 50 Handbook of Islamic banking to the bad news. This is due to the fact that the bank’s own profitability is not affected by the fluctuating fortunes of the client’s investment, except only when there is a regime change from regular interest payments to a default problem. In other words, interest payments are due irrespective of profitability of the physical investment, and the conventional bank experiences a change in its fortunes only when there are debt-servicing difficulties. But a temporary cash-flow problem of the entrepreneur, and just a few delayed payments, might be seen to be a regime change, which could blow up into a ‘sudden stop’ in lending. In the Islamic model, these temporary shocks would generate a different response from the bank, because the lenders regularly receive information on the ups and downs of the client’s business in order to calculate their share of the profits, which provides the important advantage that the flow of information, as indeed the payment from the borrower to the lender, is more or less on a continuous basis, and not in some discrete steps. For this and other reasons, Muslim scholars have emphasized that profit-and-loss sharing contracts promote greater stability in financial markets. Islamic financial contracting encourages banks to focus on the long run in their relationships with their clients. However, this focus on long-term relationships in profit-and-loss sharing arrangements means that there might be higher costs in some areas, particularly with regard to the need for monitoring performance of the entrepreneur. Traditional banks are not obliged to oversee projects as closely as Islamic banks, because the former do not act as if they were partners in the physical investment. To the extent that Islamic banks provide something akin to equity financing as against debt financing, they need to invest relatively more in managerial skills and expertise in overseeing different investment projects. This is one reason why there is a tendency amongst Islamic banks to rely on financial instruments that are acceptable under Islamic principles, but are not the best in terms of risk-sharing properties, because in some respects they are closer to debt than to equity. This chapter focuses on this tendency that has been evident in both domestic and international Islamic finance, and comments on what steps could be taken to foster the development of profitand-loss sharing contracts, which should be given the pride of place under the shari’a. The remainder of the chapter is structured as follows. The next section provides a brief overview of Islamic financial principles, and discusses the structure of a few popular Islamic financial instruments. Following this, in the third section, there is a discussion of agency relationship in Islamic financial contracting, namely, the issues that arise when one party (the principal) contracts with another party (the agent) to perform some actions on the principal’s behalf and the decision-making authority is with the agent. The fourth section provides a rapprochement between the theory and practice of Islamic financial contracting, including a discussion of what steps could be taken to promote profit-sharing contracts. Finally, an assessment is made in the fifth section. Overview of Islamic financial contracts The prohibition of interest (riba in Arabic) is the most significant principle of Islamic finance.4 Riba comes from the Arabic root for an increase, or accretion, and the concept in Islamic finance extends beyond just a ban on interest rate to encompass the broader principle that money should not be used to generate unjustified income. As a shari’a term, riba refers to the premium that the borrower must pay to the lender on top of the principal, and it is sometimes put in simple terms as a ‘return of money on money’ to emphasize the point between interest rate and rate of return on a financial investment: riba is
Slide 69: Profit-and-loss sharing contracts in Islamic finance 51 prohibited in Islam, but profits from trade and productive investment are actually encouraged. The objection is not to the payment of profits but to a predetermined payment that is not a function of the profits and losses incurred by the firm or entrepreneur. Since the Islamic financial system stresses partnership arrangements, the entrepreneur and the creditor (bank) alike face an uncertain rate of return or profit. The Islamic financial system is equity-based, and without any debt: deposits in the banks are not guaranteed the face value of their deposits, because the returns depend on the profits and losses of the bank. Thus, on the liability side, depositors are similar to shareholders in a limited-liability company, while, on the asset side, the bank earns a return that depends on its shares in the businesses it helps to finance. One well-known Islamic banking model is known as the two-tiered mudaraba to emphasize the point that the bank enters into a profit-and-loss sharing contract on both sides of the balance sheet. On the asset side, the bank has a contract with an entrepreneur to receive a predetermined share of his profit in lieu of an interest rate. On the liability side, the bank has a contract with the depositor in which there is an agreement to share the profits accruing to the bank. In the interest rate-based system, depositors expect to receive either a predetermined return or one that is linked to some benchmark interest rate, but there is the risk that, in an extreme scenario or a very bad state of nature event, these expectations might not be fulfilled and the bank will not meet its obligations. However, in Islamic banking, the depositors know that it is the real sector that determines the rate of return that the bank will give to them, because from the very outset, and in all states of nature, the contract between the two parties is one of profit sharing. As such, the depositors expect to receive a return that is closely aligned with the ex post return on physical investment, including the possibility that there might be no or negative return. There are certain basic types of financial contracts, which have been approved by various shari’a boards as being in compliance with the principles of Islamic finance, which are briefly discussed next.5 Musharaka (partnership) This is often perceived to be the preferred Islamic mode of financing, because it adheres most closely to the principle of profit and loss sharing. Partners contribute capital to a project and share its risks and rewards. Profits are shared between partners on a preagreed ratio, but losses are shared in exact proportion to the capital invested by each party. Thus a financial institution provides a percentage of the capital needed by its customer with the understanding that the financial institution and customer will proportionately share in profits and losses in accordance with a formula agreed upon before the transaction is consummated. This gives an incentive to invest wisely and take an active interest in the investment. In musharaka, all partners have the right but not the obligation to participate in the management of the project, which explains why the profit-sharing ratio is mutually agreed upon and may be different from the investment in the total capital. Mudaraba (finance by way of trust) Mudaraba is a form of partnership in which one partner (rabb al-mal) finances the project, while the other party (mudarib) manages it. Although similar to a musharaka, this mode of financing does not require that a company be created; the financial institution provides all of the capital and the customer is responsible for the management of the project. Profits
Slide 70: 52 Handbook of Islamic banking from the investment are distributed according to a fixed, predetermined ratio. The rabb almal has possession of the assets, but the mudarib has the option to buy out the rabb al-mal’s investment. Mudaraba may be concluded between an Islamic bank, as provider of funds, on behalf of itself or on behalf of its depositors as a trustee of their funds, and its business–owner clients. In the latter case, the bank acts as a mudarib for a fee. The bank also acts as a mudarib in relation to its depositors, as it invests the deposits in various schemes. Murabaha (cost-plus financing) In a murabaha contract, the bank agrees to buy an asset or goods from a third party, and then resells the goods to its client with a mark-up. The client purchases the goods against either immediate or deferred payment. Some observers see this mode of Islamic finance to be very close to a conventional interest-based lending operation. However, a major difference between murabaha and interest-based lending is that the mark-up in murabaha is for the services the bank provides (for example, seeking and purchasing the required goods at the best price) and the mark-up is not stipulated in terms of a time period. Thus, if the client fails to make a deferred payment on time, the mark-up does not increase from the agreed price owing to delay. Also the bank owns the goods between the two sales, which means it carries the associated risks. Ijara (leasing) Like a conventional lease, ijara is the sale of manfa’a (the right to use goods) for a specific period. In Muslim countries, leasing originated as a trading activity and later on became a mode of finance. Ijara is a contract under which a bank buys and leases out an asset or equipment required by its client for a rental fee. Responsibility for maintenance/insurance rests with the lessor. During a predetermined period, the ownership of the asset remains with the lessor (that is, the bank) who is responsible for its maintenance, which means that it assumes the risk of ownership. Under an ijara contract, the lessor has the right to renegotiate the terms of the lease payment at agreed intervals. This is to ensure that the rental remains in line with market leasing rates and the residual value of the leased asset. Under this contract, the lessee (that is, the client) does not have the option to purchase the asset during or at the end of the lease term. However this objective may be achieved through a similar type of contract, ijara wa iqtina (hire-purchase). In ijara wa iqtina, the lessee commits himself to buying the asset at the end of the rental period, at an agreed price. For example, the bank purchases a building, equipment or an entire project and rents it to the client, but with the latter’s agreement to make payments into an account, which will eventually result in the lessee’s purchase of the physical asset from the lessor. Leased assets must have productive usages, like buildings, aircrafts or cars, and rent should be pre-agreed to avoid speculation. Salam (advance purchase) Salam is purchase of specified goods for forward payment. This contract is regularly used for financing agricultural production. Bai bi-thamin ajil (deferred payment financing) Bai bi-thamin ajil involves a credit sale of goods on a deferred payment basis. At the request of its customer, the bank purchases an existing contract to buy certain goods on
Slide 71: Profit-and-loss sharing contracts in Islamic finance 53 a deferred payment schedule, and then sells the goods back to the customer at an agreed price. The bank pays the original supplier upon delivery of the goods, while the bank’s customer can repay in a lump sum or make instalment payments over an agreed period. Istisnaa (commissioned manufacture) Although similar to bai bi-thamin ajil transactions, istisnaa offers greater future structuring possibilities for trading and financing. One party buys the goods and the other party undertakes to manufacture them, according to agreed specifications. Islamic banks frequently use istisnaa to finance construction and manufacturing projects. Sukuk (participation securities) Sukuk were introduced recently for the same reasons that led to the establishment of interest-free banking, which was to meet the requirements of those investors who wanted to invest their savings in shari’a-compliant financial instruments. As mentioned earlier, interest-based transactions and certain unlawful business activities (such as trading in alcoholic beverages) are ruled out in the Islamic mode of financing. However, this does not mean that the possibility of bond issuance is forbidden in Islamic finance as well. Recognizing that trading in bonds is an important element of the modern financial system, Muslim jurists and economists have focused on developing Islamic alternatives, and the sukuk have generated the most attention amongst these financial innovations. The basic difference between conventional bonds and sukuk lies in the way they are structured and floated. In the conventional system of bond issue and trading, the interest rate is at the core of all transactions. In contrast, the Islamic sukuk are structured in such a way that the issue is based on the exchange of an approved asset (for example, the underlying assets could include buildings, hire cars, oil and gas pipelines and other infrastructure components) for a specified financial consideration. In other words, sukuk are based on an exchange of an underlying asset but with the proviso that they are shari’a-compliant; that is, the financial transaction is based on the application of various Islamic commercial contracts. Thus, the equity-based nature of mudaraba and musharaka sukuk exposes investors to the risks connected with the performance of the project or venture for which the financing was raised. On the other hand, the issuance of sukuk on principles of ijara (leasing) and murabaha (cost plus sale) provides predictable and in some respects even a fixed return for the prospective investors. Under the shari’a, a financial instrument is eligible for trading in primary as well as secondary markets only if it assumes the role of al-mal or property. Insofar as a bond certificate is supported by an asset, and is transformed into an object of value, it qualifies to become an object of trade. The investor can sell the bond to the issuer or even to the third party if a secondary market for Islamic bonds exists. Therefore asset securitization is essential for Islamic bond issuance.6 Implications of agency theory for Islamic financial contracting In an agency relationship, one party (the principal) contracts with another party (the agent) to perform some actions on the principal’s behalf, and the agent has the decisionmaking authority.7 Agency relationships are ubiquitous: for example, agency relationships exist among firms and their employees, banks and borrowers, and shareholders and managers. Agency theory has generated considerable interest in financial economics, including
Slide 72: 54 Handbook of Islamic banking Islamic banking.8 This section uses agency theory to examine contractual relationships between financiers (principals) and entrepreneurs (agents) in the different types of sukuks. Jensen and Meckling (1976) developed the agency model of the firm to demonstrate that there is a principal–agent problem (or agency conflict) embedded in the modern corporation because the decision-making and risk-bearing functions of the firm are carried out by different individuals. They noted that managers have a tendency to engage in excessive perquisite consumption and other opportunistic behaviour because they receive the full benefit from these acts but bear less than the full share of the costs to the firm. The authors termed this the ‘agency cost of equity’, and point out that it could be mitigated by increasing the manager’s stake in the ownership of the firm. In the principal–agent approach, this is modelled as the incentive-compatibility constraint for the agent, and an important insight from this literature is that forcing managers to bear more of the wealth consequences of their actions is a better contract for the shareholders. However increasing managerial ownership in the firm serves to align managers’ interests with external shareholders’, but there is another problem in that the extent to which managers can invest in the firm is constrained by their personal wealth and diversification considerations. The agency literature suggests that, under certain conditions, debt might be useful in reducing agency conflicts. Jensen (1986) argues that, insofar as debt bonds the firm to make periodic payments of interest and principal, it reduces the control managers have over the firm’s cash flow, which in turn acts as an incentive-compatibility constraint; that is, it reduces the incentive to engage in non-optimal activities such as the consumption of perks. Grossman and Hart (1986) argue that the existence of debt forces managers to consume fewer perks and become more efficient because this lessens the probability of bankruptcy and the loss of control and reputation. To the extent that lenders were particularly concerned about these issues, the ijara sukuk would serve the purpose of imposing these borrowing constraints on the firm’s managers. Ijara sukuk Ijara sukuk are the most popular type of sukuk, and investors of various types – both conventional and Islamic, individual and institutions – have shown interest in this instrument. In particular, the ijara concept is the most popular amongst issuers of global Islamic sukuk. Ijara sukuk are securities of equal denomination of each issue, representing physical durable assets that are tied to an ijara contract as defined by the shari’a. The ijara sukuk are based on leased assets, and the sukuk holders are not directly linked to any particular company or institution. These sukuk represent the undivided pro rata ownership by the holder of the underlying asset; they are freely tradable at par, premium or discount in primary as well as secondary markets. To fix ideas about the structure of an ijara sukuk, consider a corporation that wants to raise funds amounting to $50 million for the purchase of land or equipment. It can issue ijara sukuk totalling that amount in small denominations of $10 000 each. The firm then either purchases the asset on behalf of the sukuk holders or transfers the ownership of the already acquired asset to certificate holders who will be the real owners of the asset. The asset is then leased back to the firm and the lease proceeds from the asset are distributed to the sukuk holders as dividend. For the issuance of the certificate the ijara certificate issuer transfers the ownership of the asset to a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), then sells investor shares in the SPV. Since the returns on the certificates, which come from
Slide 73: Profit-and-loss sharing contracts in Islamic finance 55 leasing out the assets owned by the SPV, could be either fixed or floating, it is clear that the expected returns are as predictable as a coupon on a conventional bond. Ijara sukuk can be issued through a financial intermediary (bank) or directly by the users of the lease assets. A third party can also guarantee rental payments, and since the yield is predetermined and the underlying assets are tangible and secured, the ijara certificate can be traded in the secondary market. However, too high a level of debt subjects the firm to agency costs of debt, especially in the form of distorting the risk-sharing properties. Risk shifting means that, as debt is increased to a large proportion of the total value of the firm, shareholders will prefer riskier projects. By accepting riskier projects, they can pay off the debt holders at the contracted rate and capture the residual gain if the projects are successful. However, if the projects fail, the bond holders bear the cost of the higher risk. Similar considerations apply in the bank–borrower relationship. Indeed, one of the most important lessons of the numerous banking crises is the problem of ‘moral hazard’ that arises when banks are such an important part of the payments system and the need to protect the depositors is a major political constraint. Under such circumstances, some banks felt that they were too big to fail. The incentives for bank managers had become distorted in the difficult times. In good times, managers are unlikely to take huge risks with depositors’ and shareholders’ money, because they have their jobs and reputations to protect. However the manager’s attitude could change if the bank is close to insolvency. By raising rates to attract new deposits and then betting everything on a few risky investments, the managers can try to turn the banks’ dire situation around. This ‘gambling for resurrection’ is what may have happened to some of the troubled banks during some of the financial crises, which may have tried to avoid insolvency by continuing to lend at very high rates to the same clients. The profit-sharing modes of financing mitigate these types of problems in Islamic finance, because of the close linkages between the assets and liabilities sides of Islamic banks. These are precisely the sort of reasons why one would encourage the use of mudaraba or musharaka sukuks. Mudaraba sukak Mudaraba or muqaradah sukuk have as an underlying instrument a mudaraba contract in which, as discussed above, one party provides the capital, while the other party brings its labour to the partnership, and the profit is to be shared between them according to an agreed ratio. The issuer of the certificate is called a mudarib, the subscribers are the capital owners, and the realized funds are the mudaraba capital. The certificate holders own the assets of the modaraba operation and share the profit and losses as specified in the agreement. Thus the mudaraba sukuk give their owner the right to receive their capital at the time the sukuk are surrendered, and an annual proportion of the realized profits as mentioned in the issuance publication. Mudaraba sukuk may be issued by an existing company (which acts as mudarib) to investors (who act as partners, or rab al-mal) for the purpose of financing a specific project or activity, which can be separated for accounting purposes from the company’s general activities. The profits from this separate activity are split according to an agreed percentage amongst the certificate holders. The contract may provide for future retirement of the sukuk at the then market price, and often stipulates that a specific percentage of the mudarib’s profit share is paid periodically to the sukuk-holders to withdraw their investment in stages.
Slide 74: 56 Handbook of Islamic banking Musharaka sukuk Musharaka sukuk are based on an underlying musharaka contract, and are quite similar to mudarada sukuk. The only major difference is that the intermediary will be a partner of the group of subscribers or the musharaka sukuk holders in much the same way as the owners of a joint stock company. Almost all of the criteria applied to a mudaraba sukuk are also applicable to the musharaka sukuk, but in the mudaraba sukuk the capital is from just one party. The issuer of the certificate is the inviter to a partnership in a specific project or activity, the subscribers are the partners in the musharaka contract, and the realized funds are the contributions of the subscribers in the musharaka capital. The certificate holders own the assets of partnership and share the profits and losses. Agency theory recognizes that principals and agents often have different goals, and that the agent may not be motivated to act in the interests of the principal when there is goal conflict. In such cases, the principal needs to make sure that a contract is drawn up appropriately and that there are enforcement mechanisms to ensure that its interests are served. However, it is practically impossible to draw up a contract that considers all possible future contingencies. There is outcome uncertainty, which means that outcomes are influenced by unpredictable factors that are beyond the agent’s control. For this reason, it is not always possible to infer the quality of the agent’s effort by examination of outcomes and to determine unambiguously whether the agent or external factors are to blame if outcomes are poor.9 If one takes these factors into consideration in financial contracting, it appears that, for short-term and medium-term lending, principals would prefer the murabaha sukuk. Murabaha sukuk Murabaha sukuk are issued on the basis of murabaha sale for short-term and mediumterm financing. As mentioned earlier, the term murabaha refers to sale of goods at a price covering the purchase price plus a margin of profit agreed upon by both parties concerned. The advantage of this mode of financing is that, if the required commodity in the murabaha is too expensive for an individual or a banking institution to buy from its own resources, it is possible in this mode to seek additional financiers. The financing of a project costing $50 million could be mobilized on an understanding with the would-be ultimate owner that the final price of the project would be $70 million, which would be repaid in equal instalments over five years. The various financiers may share the $20 million murabaha profit in proportion to their financial contributions to the operation. According to shari’a experts, the murabaha sukuk certificate represents a monetary obligation from a third party that arises out of a murabaha transaction, which means that it is a dayn, and it cannot be traded except at face value because any difference in value would be tantamount to riba. Accordingly, murabaha-based sukuk can be sold only in the primary market, which limits its scope because of the lack of liquidity. To allow the trading of the murabaha sukuk in the secondary market, Islamic finance experts have suggested that, if the security represents a mixed portfolio consisting of a number of transactions, then this portfolio may be issued as negotiable certificates. The problem of moral hazard arises because the principal has imperfect information about the agent’s actions.10 Consequently, the agent may be tempted by self-interest to
Slide 75: Profit-and-loss sharing contracts in Islamic finance 57 take advantage of the principal. (Actually, the threats of bankruptcy and sudden stops in lending may deliver at least a certain minimum quality of entrepreneurial effort. Unfortunately, they do not necessarily encourage the most effective environment.) In order to protect its interests, the principal may offer the agent a contract that indicates the extent to which his or her compensation is contingent upon certain specified behaviour and outcomes. Control systems that include contracts in which compensation is contingent primarily upon specified outcomes are referred to in the agency literature as ‘outcome-based’ control systems. On the other hand, control systems that include contracts in which compensation is contingent primarily upon specified behaviour are referred to in the agency literature as ‘behaviour-based’ control systems. The advantage of outcome-based contracts is that they may be structured so that they align the goals of the two parties; if entrepreneurs are motivated to maximize income because of profit sharing, they will attempt to produce outcomes that the principal specifies. Consequently, such contracts require the principal to monitor outcomes but reduces the need to monitor entrepreneurs’ behaviour. Unfortunately, outcome-based contracts may not be efficient in lending. Their inefficiency may arise, in part, because it is practically impossible for a principal to write a contract that considers all possible future contingencies (supply and demand shocks, wage) that can influence outcomes. Outcome-based contracts may also be inefficient because outcomes may be influenced not just by an entrepreneur’s actions but also by factors that are beyond his control. Thus there may be considerable variation in profits even when the amount and quality of the entrepreneur’s effort are high. In such cases, the relative risk aversion of individual entrepreneurs may reduce the efficiency of outcome-based control systems that force them to absorb the risk that their income may vary owing to factors beyond their control. Entrepreneurs will only accept such a risky contract if the expected income from this contract will be greater than that from a contract in which compensation is not dependent upon factors that are outside their control. Also outcome-based compensation systems may discourage entrepreneurs from investing in projects when they feel that these projects may not have favourable outcomes. Theory and practice in profit sharing Reflecting the need for a rapprochement between theory and practice in Islamic finance, bankers and policymakers have focused on the problem that, despite several years of experience by now in the countries that have adopted Islamic banking, it is still the case that a high percentage of the assets of the domestic banking system have remained concentrated in short-term or trade-related modes of financing rather than in the more bona fide modes of musharaka and mudaraba. The weaker Islamic modes are permissible under the shari’a, but unfortunately they do not provide the same advantages as the profitsharing modes, including incentives for financing longer-term investment projects and improved risk management. In the international context, sukuk is somewhat similar to a conventional bond in that it is a security instrument, and provides a predictable level of return. However, a fundamental difference is that a bond represents pure debt on the issuer but a sukuk represents in addition to the risk on creditworthiness of the issuer, an ownership stake in an existing or well-defined asset or project. Also, while a bond creates a lender/borrower relationship, the subject of a sukuk is frequently a lease, creating a lessee/lessor relationship.
Slide 76: 58 Handbook of Islamic banking Asset-backed securities Both asset-backed securities (ABS) and project finance loans can be used to create Islamic structures, since the underlying assets generate the return on investment that is not directly linked to a predetermined interest rate. When compared to ABS, project financings are complex to arrange, and moreover, they come to the market at unpredictable intervals, depending on the project cycle in a given country. Thus banks and arrangers have focused on the sukuk, which has emerged as the most popular and fastest-growing new product in Islamic finance. However, whereas Islamic finance generally incorporates a degree of risk sharing, the modelling of rental payments can in practice result in a highly predictable rate of return. For example, the sukuk can be backed by the underlying cash flows from a portfolio of ijara (lease contracts), or other Islamic agreements such as istisnaa (financing for manufactured goods during the production period). If the rental payments are calculated on some floating rate benchmark, say the six-month US Dollar Libor, then the end-product will not differ all that much from a debt obligation. Furthermore, to achieve the same ratings as assigned to the sovereign, sukuks might include unconditional, irrevocable guarantees and/or purchase agreements from the issuer. In the Bahrain, Malaysia and Qatar deals there was a commitment from the government to buy back the leased assets at a price sufficient to meet the sukuk obligations. These guarantees by the borrowers are so central to the credit enhancement of the sukuk that the credit rating agencies do not look very closely at the assets in the underlying pool. This may be contrasted to what would be expected in a conventional asset-backed deal, which suggests that sukuk are more similar to covered bonds than to securitizations. In a covered bond offering, investors have full recourse to the borrower and, by way of example, in the Malaysian government’s inaugural Islamic offering in 2002, the five-year global sukuk was backed by government-owned land and buildings, and the offering was structured like a sale-andleaseback arrangement to accommodate the Islamic prohibition on interest payments. Covered bonds Covered bonds are securities backed by mortgages or public sector loans, and in some respects are a form of fixed-rate debt that remain on the lenders’ balance sheet. The market was invented in Germany, where mortgage lenders use the bonds, known as Pfandbriefe, to recapitalize and to finance new lending. Issuers like covered bonds because they offer a reliable source of liquidity, while investors like them because they offer a more highly rated investment product than a straight institutional bond. This reflects the fact that the ratings for the covered bond are relatively more independent from issuer, event and credit risk than for the institutional bond. Thus issuers find the covered bond market appealing because they can refinance their asset pools much more cheaply and, because investors feel more secure with mortgage-backed or public sector-backed bonds, they are willing to accept lower returns. A covered bond generally constitutes a full recourse debt instrument of an issuing bank that is unsecured against the bank, but has a priority claim over a pool of mortgages or public sector assets (cover pool). For instance, covered bonds are backed by pools of mortgages that remain on the issuer’s balance sheet, as opposed to mortgage-backed securities, where the assets are taken off the balance sheet. Despite similarities between a covered bond structure and a securitization, the covered bond involves the bank, rather than the SPV (special purpose vehicle), issuing the bonds. Bondholders thus have recourse to the
Slide 77: Profit-and-loss sharing contracts in Islamic finance 59 bank as well as to the security over the assets. Unlike a securitization, where the bonds are financed by the cash flows from the assets, the cash flow that supports covered bonds is only used to service the bonds if the bank defaults and there is a call on the guarantee. Sukuks Investors also like the fact that covered bond issuers are on a very tight leash, and have strong controls on what they may and may not do. In contrast, borrowers may or may not live within their budget limits. To the extent that sukuks are akin to covered bonds, they ought to lower monitoring costs, but this comes at the expense of less efficient risk sharing than in the traditional mudaraba or musharaka contracts. It should also be noted that monitoring costs are not eliminated altogether in sukuks. A potential problem of adverse selection remains with such a contract, because borrowers may be tempted to exaggerate competence, ability or willingness to provide the effort required by the principal in order to obtain a contract or to obtain a contract with more favourable terms. In such cases, the principal, in order to protect its interests, often requires that borrowers should present some evidence of their competence, ability and willingness to provide the necessary effort. Such evidence may include past performance. In order to protect principals from adverse selection, principals may enter into contracts with entrepreneurs who have the necessary credentials with assurance that these agents are able and willing to provide the considerable effort required to obtain the credentials. The threat of terminating the lending also serves as a deterrent to entrepreneurs who wish to misrepresent their abilities and engage in contracts that require practice beyond the scope of their training. In a competitive market, it also may be desirable for principals to ensure that the entrepreneurs are able to deliver high levels of customer satisfaction. To this end, customer evaluations of the firms may be useful data for principals who wish to ensure that they do not enter into contracts with entrepreneurs who are less able to satisfy their customers. Thus customer evaluations of entrepreneurs or firms may be useful information for principals who wish to minimize the problem of adverse selection. Above and beyond these considerations, some observers have also pointed to the possible advantages of sukuks over traditional musharaka in terms of securitization and credit enhancement possibilities that are available with sukuks. The arguments advanced in this connection are similar to those that were made for using guarantees on certain external debt-servicing payments of indebted developing countries. Those proposals had been motivated by the desire to reduce some of the difficulties that heavily indebted countries had faced in restoring normal market access, which reflected in part the perceptions of market participants concerning the credit risks involved in financial transactions with indebted developing countries. It had been argued that the use of new collateralized financial instruments to securitize existing and new bank claims in the indebted developing countries could play a role in reducing these credit risks. Structured finance The securitization of bank claims – that is, the conversion of such claims into readily negotiable bonds that could be held by either bank or non-bank investors – could be facilitated by establishing collateral that would be used to partially guarantee future interest payments or principal repayments on the new bonds. Some countries have undertaken securitization schemes, which collateralized the principal of new bonds. Such a collateralized
Slide 78: 60 Handbook of Islamic banking securitization can result in a reduction in contractual indebtedness since investors will exchange existing claims for new claims bearing a smaller face value when the prospect of future payments is more certain on the new claims. Moreover, it is also possible that the availability of securitized and collateralized claims will stimulate non-bank investor interest in the external obligations of developing countries. Both the reduction in contractual indebtedness and the possible increased involvement of non-bank investors have been viewed as means to foster increased access to international financial markets for countries with debt-servicing difficulties. To be sure, the downside of structured finance should also be mentioned, because collateralization can result in shifting the financing risk to the country. One technique to mitigate transfer and exchange rate risks has been to establish escrow accounts and to use future export receivables as collateral for the commercial loan. As is well known, however, these techniques may have negative macroeconomic implications if pursued too vigorously or if risk-sharing attributes are skewed too heavily against the borrowing country. The earmarking of foreign exchange revenues for particular creditors may reduce the country’s flexibility in responding to a balance of payments crisis. Such contracts may also set prices at significantly below market levels. Finally, they may have large up-front fees, which can undermine a country’s foreign exchange position. An assessment Three broad approaches that might be considered for invigorating the role of profitsharing arrangements in Islamic finance in the near term or over the longer term should be mentioned. The first approach could focus on ways to improve the links between the real and financial sides of the economy and to lower the monitoring costs in Islamic financing. The key point is that, when a firm’s revenues and/or profits or a country’s GDP growth turn out to be lower than what would be the typical case, debt payments due will also be lower than in the absence of Islamic financing. This is a very important advantage of Islamic finance, because it will help maintain the firm’s debt/revenue or a country’s debt/GDP ratio at sustainable levels, and avoid what could be a costly bankruptcy for a firm, or a politically difficult adjustment in the primary balance at a time of recession for a country. Conversely, when GDP growth turns out higher than usual, the country will pay more than it would have without Islamic financing, thus reducing its debt/GDP ratio less than it would have otherwise. In sum, this insurance scheme embedded in Islamic finance keeps the debt/GDP ratio within a narrower range for the borrowing country. A second approach to invigorating the profit sharing modes of financing might be to encourage a greater role in the securitization and collateralization of claims on firms or countries, which is done in structured finance or sukuks. However, it should be stressed, at the risk of repetition, that transformation of banking from an interest-based system to one that relies on profit sharing makes the Islamic banking system an essentially equitybased system, and the returns on bank deposits cannot be determined ex ante. Therefore an important difference between interest-based bank lending and Islamic modes of financing is that, whereas the former banking system makes interest payments to depositors regardless of the actual returns on the physical investment, the latter system determines the returns to depositors on the basis of profit sharing, which is linked to the productivity of the investment. However, sukuks do not focus on the close linkages with
Slide 79: Profit-and-loss sharing contracts in Islamic finance 61 the real rates of return for a particular firm or for the GDP of the economy at large, which makes them less attractive than the traditional mudaraba or musharaka contracts. In this connection, it should also be noted that an Islamic financial system has a number of features which distinguish it from the interest-based system, and the absence of a fixed or predetermined interest rate is only one such feature. Indeed, one of the most important characteristics of an Islamic financial system is that there is a close link between the real sector and the financial sector, and sukuks are not the natural instrument for strengthening such linkages. A third approach to invigorating profit sharing could focus on ways to promote the usability and liquidity of Islamic financial instruments. One way of catalyzing such an expansion could concentrate on the establishment of some form of clearinghouse mechanism for various types of Islamic modes of financing. In this connection, it should be emphasized that, when outcomes are strongly influenced by factors beyond an agent’s control, and agents are risk-averse and are reluctant to accept contracts in which their compensation is contingent upon these outcomes, principals may be better off if they offer their agents a contract in which compensation is contingent upon certain specified behaviour. In other words, Islamic financing would complement profit sharing (that is, outcome-based monitoring) with additional incentives for appropriate behaviour. Such a behaviour-based control system, however, is most desirable if principals can specify clearly, a priori, what behaviour an agent should perform and can inexpensively acquire information to ensure that the agent actually performs the contractually agreed-upon behaviour. Unfortunately, there are several potential problems with such control systems. First, it may be very difficult for principals clearly to specify an entrepreneur’s behaviour in every possible situation. This is especially likely if an entrepreneur’s behaviour must be contingent upon specific aspects of the firm or particular market and there is considerable heterogeneity in these markets. Second, it may be difficult and expensive for principals to monitor entrepreneurs’ behaviour. Typically, direct observation of individual actions is usually infeasible. Thus behaviour is usually monitored by examination of the records in major cost categories, that often are required from entrepreneurs to justify their recommendations for increased borrowing. It is likely to be quite expensive to determine whether the right actions were taken by the entrepreneurs. Such datachecking control systems would require highly skilled personnel and even then the evaluations might be rather ambiguous.11 Be that as it may, this is an area worth further consideration. Notes See, for example, Iqbal and Mirakhor (1987) and Mirakhor (2005). The body of Islamic law is known as shari’a, which means a clear path to be followed and observed. 2. Mirakhor and Zaidi (2005) provide principal–agent models to examine certain key issues in Islamic financial contracting. 3. One example of this partnership would be that the bank provides the financing and the entrepreneur gives his expertise and time to the project. The profits are split according to an agreed ratio, and if the business venture incurs a loss or fails, the bank loses the capital it spent on the project, while the entrepreneur has nothing to show for his time and effort. There can be other types of arrangements in which there are multiple partners and different levels of capital investments, but the main principle of profit sharing remains the same; that is, unlike conventional finance, there is no guaranteed rate of return, and banks should not be nominal or detached creditors in an investment, but serve as partners in the business. 1.
Slide 80: 62 4. Handbook of Islamic banking There is little or no disagreement amongst scholars when it comes to the very basic tenets of Islamic finance (e.g., prohibition of riba, the obligation to be fair and transparent in financial contracting, the principle of profit-and-loss sharing, exclusion of sectors such as alcoholic beverages and casinos from lending operations) but there are some differences in certain detailed issues. For example, interest, either paid or received, is not permitted, but does this mean that an Islamic bank cannot hold any shares in a company that has part of its funding as debt rather than equity? However, to exclude a company that pays interest on any portion of its debt could lead to an adverse selection problem for Islamic banks, because they will be obliged to deal only with those companies that are unable to raise debt. 5. A shari’a board is the committee of Islamic scholars available to an Islamic financial institution for guidance and supervision. 6. Securitization is defined as the process of pooling assets, packaging them into securities, and making them marketable to investors. It is a process of dividing the ownership of tangible assets into units of equal value and issuing securities as per their value. 7. Ross (1973) and Jensen and Meckling (1976). 8. See Haque and Mirakhor (1987). 9. The principal has to incur costs in order to draw up contracts and to acquire reliable information either about outcomes or about the nature and quality of the agent’s actions. Unfortunately, if such costs are not incurred, the agent may be tempted to provide misinformation about its actions if such behaviour serves the agent’s interests. It usually is assumed that perfect information is prohibitively expensive and so principals inevitably have imperfect information about their agents’ actions. 10. See Akerlof (1970). 11. This example illustrates well the potential problems of a behaviour-based control system for financial contracting. A control system for investment programmes would be costly because of the need to obtain second opinions from outside managers/entrepreneurs, which runs the risk of giving out important information about the firm to potential competitors. Also, because of the inevitability of disagreements, such a system may not be very effective in detecting any subtle biases in recommendations for particular investments. In summary, monitoring individual entrepreneurs’ behaviour to determine the quality or the cost-effectiveness of their investment plans may be expensive and yet may not be very effective. Bibliography Aghion, P. and P. Bolton (1992), ‘An incomplete contracts approach to financial contracting’, Review of Economic Studies, 77, 338–401. Akerlof, G. (1970), ‘The market for “Lemons”: quality and the market mechanism’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 84(August), 488–500. Chapra, M. Umer (1992), Islam and the Economic Challenge, Leicester: The Islamic Foundation. Fama, E. and M.C. Jensen (1983), ‘Separation of ownership and control’, Journal of Law and Economics, June, 301–25. Grossman, S. and O. Hart (1986), ‘The costs and benefits of ownership: a theory of vertical and lateral integration’, Journal of Political Economy, 94, 691–719. Haque, Nadeem ul and Abbas Mirakhor (1987), ‘Optimal profit-sharing contracts and investment in an interestfree economy’, in Mohsin S. Khan and Abbas Mirakhor (eds), Theoretical Studies in Islamic Banking and Finance, Houston: The Institute for Research and Islamic Studies. Hart, O. (2001), ‘Financial contracting’, Journal of Economic Literature, 39(4), 1079–1100. Hart, O. and J. Moore (1994), ‘A theory of debt based on the inalienability of human capital’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 109, 841–79. Hart, O. and J. Moore (1998), ‘Default and renegotiation: a dynamic model of debt’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 113, 1–41. Holmstrom, B. (1979), ‘Moral hazard and observability’, Bell Journal of Economics, 10 (Spring), 74–91. Iqbal, Zubair and Abbas Mirakhor (1987), ‘Islamic banking’, International Monetary Fund Occasional Paper 49, IMF, Washington, DC. Jensen, M.C. (1986), ‘Agency costs of free cash flow, corporate finance, and the market for takeovers’, American Economic Review, May, 323–9. Jensen, M.C. and W. Meckling (1976), ‘Theory of the firm: managerial behavior, agency costs, and capital structure’, Journal of Financial Economics, 3, 305–60. Mirakhor, Abbas (2005), ‘A note on Islamic economics’, International Monetary Fund, mimeograph. Mirakhor, Abbas and Iqbal Zaidi (2005), ‘Islamic financial contracts between principal and agent’, International Monetary Fund mimeograph. Ross, S. (1973), ‘The economic theory of agency: the principal’s problem’, American Economic Review, 63(2), 134–9.
Slide 81: Profit-and-loss sharing contracts in Islamic finance 63 Rothschild, M. and J.E. Stiglitz (1976), ‘Equilibrium in competitive insurance markets: an essay on the economics of imperfect information’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, XC, 629–49. Shleifer, A. and R.W. Vishny (1989), ‘Management entrenchment: the case of manager-specific investments,’ Journal of Financial Economics, June, 123–40. Stiglitz, Joseph E. (1974), ‘Incentives and risk sharing in sharecropping’, Review of Economic Studies, XLI, 219–55. Stiglitz, J.E. and A. Weiss (1981), ‘Credit rationing in markets with imperfect information’, American Economic Review, LXXI, 393–410. Stulz, R.M. (1990), ‘Managerial discretion and optimal financing policies’, Journal of Financial Economics, 26(1), 3–27.
Slide 82: 5 Comparing Islamic and Christian attitudes to usury Mervyn K. Lewis The Christian attitude to interest Islam is today the only major religion that maintains a prohibition on usury, yet this distinctiveness was not always the case. Hinduism, Judaism and Christianity have all opposed usury. Under Christianity, prohibitions or severe restrictions upon usury operated for over 1400 years. Generally, these controls meant that any taking of interest was forbidden. But gradually only exorbitant interest came to be considered usurious, and in this particular form usury laws of some sort preventing excessive interest remain in force today in many Western countries (and some Muslim ones). This chapter examines the attitudes of the Christian Church to usury, and compares Christian doctrine and practice with the Islamic position.1 To medieval Christians, the taking of what we would now call interest was usury, and usury was a sin, condemned in the strongest terms. Usury comes from the Latin usura, meaning enjoyment, denoting money paid for the use of money, and under medieval canon law meant the intention of the lender to obtain more in return from a loan than the principal amount due. It equates to what we would today call interest, measured by the difference between the amount that a borrower repays and the principal amount that is originally received from the lender (Patinkin, 1968). Both usury and interest also correspond to riba which, as we saw in Chapter 2, literally means ‘increase’ or in excess of the original sum. On the face of it, the Islamic stance on usury would seem to be little different from the official Christian position in the Middle Ages.2 Doctrinal sources Christian doctrine derived from three basic sources. First, there were the scriptures, especially the Gospels and the teachings of Jesus. Second, as the Middle Ages progressed and the Church became increasingly institutionalized, the words of Jesus were not sufficient to cover all eventualities and were supplemented, and to a large degree supplanted, by canon law based on the rulings of ecumenical councils and Church courts. Third, schoolmen and theologians laid the foundations of Christian theology, drawing on ethical principles developed by Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle. Biblical sources The New Testament has three references to usury, and the Old Testament has four. Of the three passages on usury in the New Testament, two are identical and relate to the parable of the talents (Matthew 25: 14–30; Luke 19: 12–27). Both, it must be said, are decidedly ambiguous on the question of usury (Gordon, 1982). The servant who returns the talents as he received them is castigated by the nobleman for not having ‘put my money to the exchanges, and then at my coming I should have received my own with 64
Slide 83: Comparing Islamic and Christian attitudes to usury 65 usury’ (Mt. 25: 2–7). If interpreted literally, this verse would appear to condone the taking of usury, yet at the same time the recipient is criticized for ‘reaping that thou didst not sow’ (Luke 19: 21). However, the other reference in the New Testament is clear: ‘But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest’ (Luke 6: 35).3 Jesus himself exhibited a distinctly antiusury attitude when he cast the money-lenders from the temple, while the Sermon on the Mount revealed strongly anti-wealth sentiments as well. In the case of the Old Testament, three references to usury come from the Pentateuch, the Law of Moses, the other from Psalms and attributed to David. In historical order: If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as a usurer, neither shall thou lay upon him usury. (Exodus 22: 25). And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner: that he may live with thee. Take thou no usury of him, or increase: but fear thy God; that thy brother may live with thee. Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase. (Leviticus 25: 35–7) Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother; usury of money, usury of victuals, usury of any thing that is lent upon usury: Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury. (Deuteronomy 23: 19–20) Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle, who shall dwell in thy holy hill? He that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward against the innocent. He that doeth these things shall never be moved. (Psalm 15: 1,5) In Exodus and Deuteronomy, the biblical (Hebrew) term for interest is neshekh, although in Leviticus the term neshekh occurs alongside tarbit or marbit. In the Encyclopedia Judaica it is argued that neshekh, meaning ‘bite’, was the term used for the exaction of interest from the point of view of the debtor, and tarbit or marbit, meaning ‘increase’, was the term used for the recovery of interest by the creditor (Cohn, 1971, p. 28). In both meanings, it seems to be the case that the prohibition on interest is not a prohibition on usury in the modern sense of the term, that is, excessive interest, but of all, even minimal, interest. Cohn concludes that there is no difference in law between various rates of interest, as all interest is prohibited. Three other features of the Mosaic injunctions are notable. First, in at least two cases, the ban on usury is connected to poverty and consumption loans (likely the main form of loan at that time). Second, two of the passages extend the ban to any form of loan, not just of money, by including food given for profit. Any time-contingent contract might therefore be regarded as usurious. Third, all three make clear that the prohibition refers to loans to ‘brothers’, that is, fellow members of the tribe or adherents to the common faith. Charging interest to ‘foreigners’ was acceptable. In this way, the Jews justified taking interest from Gentiles, and Christians charged interest to ‘Saracens’ (as Arabs and, by extension, Muslims in general were called in the Middle Ages).4 These three qualifications were to prove instrumental to the later removal of the ban. Even at the time, the ‘Deuteronomic double standard’, as Nelson (1949) termed it, was
Slide 84: 66 Handbook of Islamic banking difficult to explain away by Christians, since Jesus had preached the oneness of friend and foe alike. In addition, the idea that usury to any group could be considered religiously sound was contradicted by the passage from the Psalms quoted above. Canon law Canon law was fashioned by the ecumenical councils, the popes and the bishops. The early Church first condemned usury by the 44th of the Apostolic Canons at the Council of Arles, 314, followed by Nicea in 325, and Laodicia in 372. The first Canon law ruling against usury was the Papal Encyclia Nec hoc quoque of Saint Leo the Great, pope from 440 to 461. The last Papal Encyclical against usury, Vix pervenit, was issued in 1745 by Pope Benedict  (although it was not an infallible decree). In between, the Catholic Church maintained its opposition to the practice, although the emphasis did change over time. At first, the Church’s prohibition on usury did not go beyond the clergy, although more general disapproval was expressed to laity by the first Council of Carthage (345). Roll (1953) argues that a wider prohibition was unnecessary. In the absence of a developed money economy and capital market, with most feudal dues rendered in kind, the Church was not only the largest production unit but also virtually the only recipient of large sums of money. Irrespective of the scriptures, for the Church to charge interest on consumption loans to the needy would rightly be seen as exploitation. Glaeser and Scheinkman (1998) suggest that interest-free loans were ‘good business’ in that they generated enthusiasm amongst the people for re1igion, and acted as a form of insurance by transferring resources from situations when households were well off to situations when they were in need of help. As trade and commerce expanded in the later Middle Ages, and the demand for loans increased, to combat ‘the insatiable rapacity of usurers’ the Church’s prohibition was extended to laymen in ever more strident and stringent forms (Divine, 1967). These condemnations came from the great Lateran Councils, Lyon II and Vienne. The Second Lateran Council (1139) condemned usury as ‘ignominious’. Lateran III (1179) introduced excommunication (exclusion from the Christian community) for open usurers. Lateran IV (1215) censured Christians who associated with Jewish usurers. Lyon II (1274) extended the condemnations to foreign usurers. Finally, the Council of Vienne (1311) allowed excommunication of princes, legislators and public authorities who either utilized or protected usurers, or who sought to distinguish between allowable interest and usury.5 It was thus with good reason that Tawney (1926) described this period as the ‘highwater mark’ of the ecclesiastical attack on usury. It was also at this time that an extra dimension was added to the Church’s arguments against usury in the revival of Aristotelian logic and its combination with Roman law by St Thomas Aquinas (1225–74). Aquinas and Aristotle The third influence upon the Church’s view on usury came from the medieval Schoolmen and in particular the most important of them, Saint Thomas Aquinas, who is generally acknowledged as the greatest of the scholastic philosophers, ranking in status as a philosopher alongside Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Hegel (Russell, 1946). St Thomas succeeded in persuading the Church fathers that Aristotle’s views should form the basis of Christian philosophy, and that the Arab philosophers, especially Ibn Rushd (1126–98) the Spanish–Arabian and his Christian followers, the Averroists, had misinterpreted Aristotle
Slide 85: Comparing Islamic and Christian attitudes to usury 67 when developing their views on immortality. Consequently, St Thomas’s Summa Theologica sought to undo this close adherence to Arabian doctrines. In the process, St Thomas resurrected Aristotle’s views on usury. The Greeks themselves (like the Romans later) exhibited no compunction about the taking of interest, but Plato disliked usury and The Republic, his ideal state, was opposed to all credit transactions except those undertaken on the basis of friendship and brotherhood, and explicitly prohibited lending at interest.6 Plato’s pupil Aristotle also opposed interest, based on a distinction between natural and unnatural modes of production, the latter including income from money lending. Interest thus violates natural law, a position with which St Thomas and the Church concurred. Why did Christians abhor usury? Having examined the sources of the Christian doctrine on usury in terms of the Bible, the canon law and the writings of the Fathers and Schoolmen overlaid on Greek philosophy, it is now time to pull the threads together. At least ten justifications could be offered by the medieval Churchmen for the ban on usury. First, usury contravened the teachings of Jesus. Although the passages in the Gospels can be variously interpreted, the absence of a specific condemnation cannot disguise the fact that on the basis of Jesus’s casting out of the moneylenders and the principle ‘actions speak louder than words’, the lending out of money at interest was regarded as the very worst form of gain. Second, Hebrew law prohibited usury unambiguously. The only point at issue was to whom and how widely the ban applied. However, from the very earliest years, Christians at least should have had few illusions on that score. St Jerome (340–420) and St Ambrose (340–97) claimed that ‘brothers’ in Deuteronomy had been universalized by the prophets and the New Testament (‘love thine enemies’). Consequently, there was no scriptural warrant for taking usury from anyone. Third, the Scriptures also severely restricted loan-related activities. Much lending of money occurred against objects held in trust (a pawn or pledge) by the lender. The prohibition of usury also extended to the types of collateral which could be used. The usury restriction in Exodus is immediately followed by the injunction: ‘If thou at all take thy neighbour’s raiment to pledge, thou shalt deliver it unto him by that the sun goeth down’ (Exodus 22: 26). This and other limitations on pledges are given in Deuteronomy 24, and there are restrictions on collateral in the Halakha (Rabinovich, 1993). These presumably had the intention of reducing the power of the creditor, and preventing the debtor from having to observe usurious contracts (and thus himself commit a sin). Under Talmudic law, it is not only the creditor who takes interest who is violating the biblical prohibition, but also the debtor who agrees to pay interest, the guarantor who guarantees the debt which bears interest, the witnesses who attest the creation of an interest-bearing debt, and even the scribe who writes out the deed (Cohn, 1971). Fourth, usury was contrary to Aristotle. Once canonists accepted Aristotle’s distinction between the natural economy and the unnatural art of moneymaking, then it followed that the science of economics had to be seen as a body of laws designed to ensure the moral soundness of economic activity. Money, according to Aristotle, arose as a means of facilitating the legitimate exchange of natural goods in order to provide utility to
Slide 86: 68 Handbook of Islamic banking consumers. As such, money was barren. Interest was the unnatural fruit of a barren parent, money. The most hated sort [of wealth], and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes gain out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, and not to increase at interest . . . Of all modes of getting wealth, this is the most unnatural. (Politics, 1258) In fact, usury (which of course meant all lending at interest) was doubly condemned. Through usury, the accumulation of money becomes an end in itself, and the satisfaction of wants is lost from sight. Those doing so are rendered ‘deficient in higher qualities’ (Politics, 1323). Fifth, St Thomas Aquinas augmented the Aristotelian view with the doctrine of Roman law which divided commodities into those which are consumed in use (consumptibles) and those which are not (fungibles). Wine is an example of the former (although perhaps not a good one to use in this context). ‘If a man wanted to sell wine separately from the use of wine, he would be selling the same thing twice, or he would be selling what does not exist: wherefore he would evidently commit a sin of injustice.’ Since ‘the proper and principal use of money is its consumption’, ‘it is by very nature unlawful to take payment for the use of money lent, which payment is known as interest’ (Summa Theologica, II, 78). Sixth, closely related was the view that usury violated natural justice. When a loan of money is made, the ownership of the thing that is lent passes to the borrower. Why should the creditor demand payment from a person who is, in effect, merely using what is now his own property? To do so would be to rob from those who make profitable use of the money. Profits should rightly belong to those who make the money profitable. Seventh, St Thomas also condemned usury because it ‘leads to inequality which is contrary to justice’. The Biblical admonitions on usury are surrounded by references to the ‘poor’, ‘widows and orphans’ and those in poverty to whom one is encouraged to ‘lend freely, hoping for nothing thereby’. Prohibitions on usury were allied to the notion of a ‘just price’, which featured in Aristotle’s Ethics (Thomson, 1953). The moral justification for trade, and wealth derived from trade, depended on whether the exchange which was effected is just. A ‘proportionate equality’ between the parties prior to exchange is essential if justice is to underlie commercial transactions (Ethics, Book V, Ch. 5, p. 152). This was unlikely to be the case when money was lent to needy persons for the purposes of consumption. Usury, and the search for gain for its own sake, was the basest aspect of trade, leading men to the desire for limitless accumulation. In this respect, usury laws were ‘commands to be lenient, merciful and kind to the needy’ (Maimonides, 1956). Eighth, since interest was regarded as the means by which the wealthy received an ‘unearned income’ from the unfortunate, it cut across medieval views on work. Work was a positive virtue and supplied the only justification for any kind of economic increment and profit. Consider the scriptures: ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground’ (Genesis 3:19). A university professor, for example, who might otherwise be accused of selling knowledge, which belongs only to God and cannot be sold, could at least argue on this basis that he is working and therefore merits a salary (Le Goff, 1979). But this defence did not help the usurer: ‘The creditor becomes rich by the sweat of the debtor, and the debtor does not reap the reward of his labour’ (Tawney, 1926,
Slide 87: Comparing Islamic and Christian attitudes to usury 69 p. 115). Not only does the usurer not work, but he makes his money work for him. Even in his sleep, the usurer’s money is at work and is making a profit. Nor does money observe the Sabbath. Even the peasant lets his cattle rest on Sundays. But the usurer does not let his money respect the day of rest (Baldwin, 1970, vol. 2, p. 191). Ninth, to the canonists, time was an important consideration in the sin of usury. Interest was a payment for the passage of time. Moreover, usury was defined broadly. Under Charlemagne, who first extended the usury laws to the laity, usury was defined in 806  as ‘where more is asked than is given’ (Glaeser and Scheinkman, 1998, p. 33), while in the thirteenth century usury or profit on a loan (mutuum) was distinct from other contracting arrangements. A usurer, in fact, was anyone who allowed for an element of time in a transaction, such as by asking for a higher price when selling on credit or, because of the lapse of time, goods bought cheaper and sold dearer (Tawney, 1926, pp. 59–61).7 The sin was in exploiting time itself. Time belongs to God, a divine possession. Usurers were selling something that did not belong to them. They were robbers of time, medieval gangsters (Le Goff, 1979, pp. 34–5). Finally, most damning of all was that interest was fixed and certain. It was a fixed payment stipulated in advance for a loan of money or wares without risk to the lender. It was certain in that whether or not the borrower gained or lost, the usurer took his pound of flesh (Tawney, 1926, p. 55). What delineated usury from other commercial transactions was in its being a contract for the repayment of more than the principal amount of the loan ‘without risk to the lender’ (Jones, 1989, p. 4). It was this last point which created an unbridgeable divide between commercial motives and divine precepts. According to Tawney, medieval opinion, by and large, had no objection as such to rent and profits, provided that they were not unreasonable and exploitive. In addition, the ecumenical authorities had endeavoured to formulate the prohibition upon usury in such a way as to not unnecessarily conflict with legitimate trade and commerce. But no mercy was to be shown to the usurer. In many areas of economic activity, temporally based returns were permitted because they involved the taking of a certain amount of risk. But where no risk was considered to be involved, interest taking was strictly forbidden. The usurer’s crime was in the taking of a payment for money which was fixed and certain: The primary test for usury was whether or not the lender had contracted to lend at interest without assuming a share of the risk inherent to the transaction. If the lender could collect interest regardless of the debtor’s fortunes he was a usurer. (Jones, 1989, pp. 118–19) Comparing Islamic and Christian views The parallels The similarities between the views in the previous section and those of Islam outlined in other chapters of this book are striking. These parallels are hardly surprising since Islam builds on, and sustains and fulfils, the message of its two monotheist antecedents, Judaism and Christianity, and a Muslim is not a Muslim unless he or she believes in Jesus, as a messenger of God, and all of the prophets of Allah. Consider the similarities on the topic of interest. The Christian attitudes seeing usury as the worst form of gain, as lacking any scriptural warrant whatsoever, as involving unjustified collateral, forcing the debtor to sin, as unnatural and barren, as an unwarranted
Slide 88: 70 Handbook of Islamic banking expropriation of property, as devoid of true work, and fixed, certain and lacking in risk sharing, are echoed in (or echo) Islamic views. This parallel is especially so in the case of the last mentioned reason, in that a loan provides the lender with a fixed predetermined return irrespective of the outcome of the borrower’s venture, whereas the reward to capital should instead be commensurate with the risk and effort involved and thus be governed by the return on the individual project for which funds are supplied. There are other parallels as well. Islam comprises a set of principles and doctrines that guide and regulate a Muslim’s relationship with God and with society. In this respect, Islam is not only a divine service, but also incorporates a code of conduct which regulates and organizes mankind in both spiritual and material life. The Aristotelian idea that ethics should govern the science of economics would sit comfortably with an adherent, as would the view that the Church (Muslims would of course substitute God) has command over the totality of human relations. Yusuf al-Qaradawi (1989) gives four reasons for the Islamic prohibition of interest (riba), similar to those quoted earlier in Chapter 2 of Razi ([1872]1938): ● ● ● ● Taking interest implies taking another person’s property without giving him anything in exchange. The lender receives something for nothing. Dependence on interest discourages people from working to earn money. Money lent at interest will not be used in industry, trade or commerce, all of which need capital, thus depriving society of benefits. Permitting the taking of interest discourages people from doing good. If interest is prohibited people will lend to each other with goodwill expecting nothing more back than they have loaned. The lender is likely to be wealthy and the borrower poor. The poor will be exploited by the wealthy through the charging of interest on loans. These points are virtually identical to some of the early Christian views. There is also a shared concern about the time element in contracting. Compensation from licit forms of Islamic financing must differ from interest not only by being calculated on a pre-transaction basis but also by not being explicitly related to the duration of the finance. The differences However, there are differences too. The first, and most obvious, concerns the central scriptural authority. In the case of the Bible, there are enough ambiguities – New versus Old Testament, Mosaic versus later Hebrew law, and a very parabolic parable8 – to keep an army of scholars employed (as indeed they did), whereas the injunctions in the Holy Qur’an are forthright. Second, while canon law and scholastic philosophy sought to augment scripture, the essential feature of that source was that it could – and did – change in response to the temper of the times and new religious thinking, whereas the Holy Qur’an provided a fixed and certain point of reference. Third, to the extent that Christian doctrine rested on an Aristotelian foundation it was vulnerable to the charge of being, at heart, anti-trade and commerce. Aristotle adopted the view, later followed by the Physiocrats, that the natural way to get wealth is by skilful management of house and land. Usury was diabolical and clearly the worst way of making money. But there was also something degraded about trading and exchanging things rather than actually making
Slide 89: Comparing Islamic and Christian attitudes to usury 71 them, as summed up in the medieval saying, ‘Homo mercator vix aut numquam Deo placere potest’ – the merchant can scarcely or never be pleasing to God. By contrast, the Holy Qur’an endorsed trade, so long as it was not usurious. On all three counts, where Christianity was somewhat equivocal in comparison with Islam, its stand on usury was subject to erosion. Perhaps ironically, the one aspect on which Christianity was more forthright than Islam probably served to reinforce that trend. This was in the area of punishment. Christian sanctions on usurers A Christian usurer faced five sanctions. First, he had eventually to face his Maker, and the Church left him in no doubt that he faced the fiercest of the fires of hell.9 In the scale of values, the usurer was linked with the worst evildoers, the worst occupations, the worst sins and the worst vices. Indeed, the prohibition of usury is even more rigorous than the commandment against murder; murder could be condoned in some circumstances, but nothing could excuse usury. Also, echoing Talmudic law, the sin is shared by all of those who conspire in the acts: public officials who sanction usury and even the debtors themselves. Debtors who contract to pay usury without explicitly demurring in some way are declared to share the creditor’s sin. Without the addict, the dealer could not survive. Second, disclosure meant becoming a social outcast. It has been said that the usurer was ‘tolerated on earth but earmarked for hell’ (Lopez, 1979, p. 7), but this was not so. Public opinion was that usurers should be exterminated like wolves, and their bodies thrown on the dung hill. They should be condemned to death and hanged, or at the very least banished from the country and their property confiscated.10 They were fit only to associate with Jews, robbers, rapists and prostitutes, but were worse than all of them. Thirteenthcentury society was classified according to two groupings: a classification by sins and vices, and a classification according to social rank and occupation. On both lists, usurers were at the bottom of the heap. They were publicly preached at, shamed, taunted and reviled. Third, the usurer would be punished by the Church, and by the orders of the Church. The Lateran Councils laid down clear rules for offenders: they were to be refused communion or a Christian burial, their offerings were not to be accepted, and open usurers were to be excommunicated. There could be no absolution for them and their wills were to be invalid. Those who let houses to usurers were themselves to be excommunicated. No usurer could hold public office. Church courts and civil courts fought over the lucrative business of who would levy the fines. Fourth, the only salvation for the usurer lay in restitution. Restitution had to be made to each and every person from whom interest or increase had been taken, or to their heirs. Were that not possible, the money had to be given to the poor. All property that had been pawned had to be restored, without deduction of interest or charges. And the ecclesiastical authorities could move against the usurers and their accomplices even if the debtors would not. Fifth, the usurer risked condemning his wife and heirs to penury, for the same penalties were applied to them as to the original offender. They also faced a lifetime of humility and devotion. Certain actions of the living (alms, prayers, masses) could aid in the posthumous redemption of the usurer: the sinful husband might be saved by the faithful wife. By becoming recluses, and engaging in alms, fasts and prayers, the wife and children might move God to favour the usurer’s soul.
Slide 90: 72 Handbook of Islamic banking Islamic sanctions In comparison with these punitive measures, the sanctions imposed on the Islamic usurer seem less extreme. That the usurer will not fare well on the Day of Judgement is clear enough. Consider Zamakhshari on Sura 2: 275–6: Those who consume interest (ar-riba) shall not rise again (on the day of resurrection), except as one arises whom Satan has prostrated by the touch (that is, one who is demon-possessed): that is because they have said: ‘Bargaining is just the same as interest, even though God has permitted bargaining but has forbidden interest. Now whoever receives an admonition from his Lord and then desists (from the practice), he shall retain his past gains, and his affair is committed to God. But whoever repeats (the offence) – those are the inhabitants of the fire, therein dwelling forever.11 However, no specific penalty on usurers was laid down in the Holy Qur’an, and it was left to the jurists to determine the scale of punishment, qualification and legal validity (Schacht, 1964, p. 12). According to Islamic law, riba falls into the category of those violations against the command of God for which discretionary punishment (al-ta’zir) is determined by judges of the shari’a courts. There is in these cases (which include usury) neither fixed punishment nor penance, and the ruler or the judge is completely free in the determination of the offences or sanctions (El-Awa, 1983). As for the legal status of riba transactions, Islamic law recognizes, first, a scale of religious qualifications and, second, a scale of legal validity. Interest is forbidden (haram), but on Schacht’s (1964, p. 145) interpretation a contract concluded in contravention of the rules concerning riba is defective (fasid) or voidable rather than null and void (batil). Nevertheless, this distinction between the two is not recognized by all schools of Islamic law, and since riba is a special case of ‘unjustified enrichment’ by which the property of others is consumed (or appropriated for one’s own use) for no good reason, the riba element cannot be enforced. It is a general principle of Islamic law, based on a number of passages in the Holy Qur’an, that unjustified enrichment, or ‘receiving a monetary advantage without giving a countervalue’, is forbidden, and he who receives it must give it to the poor as a charitable gift. The latter condition is the practice of Islamic banks when extant transactions are found to have violated the ban on interest, and the earnings are distributed by shari’a boards to various zakat funds. The Christian usury ban in practice Usury was clearly a sin but it was one that many Christians found difficult to resist, despite the severe temporal penalties exacted by the ecclesiastical authorities. To what extent the prohibition on usury was followed is a matter of debate. Some consider that the usury laws were rarely obeyed, others contend that evasion was difficult and rare (Temin and Voth, 2004). However, if evasion was to take place, it was much better for the interest element to be concealed and many a technique was developed in order to come to gain, while not violating the letter of the law. Of course, it hardly needs to be said that such stratagems are not unknown in Muslim economic life. Our examination of these arrangements in medieval Christianity is grouped under six headings. First, there are the variations upon interesse. Second, there are those transactions which took advantage of the international dimension. Third, interest income could be converted into other permissible forms of income. Fourth, some of the legal fictions that were employed borrowed directly from those being used contemporaneously by the
Slide 91: Comparing Islamic and Christian attitudes to usury 73 early Muslim community to circumvent the ban on riba (as others did from Jewish evasions). However, it is the fifth and sixth categories – partnerships and mudaraba-type investments – which are particularly interesting. Some practices followed seem virtually identical to those which have gained approval today in Islamic financing. Interesse A number of techniques rested on the distinction between usura, which was unlawful, and interesse, compensation for loss, which was lawful. Under the doctrine of damnum emergens, the suffering of loss, the lender was entitled to exact a penalty from the borrower if he failed to return the principal at the agreed time, that is if he defaulted. Thus, while a person was prevented from charging money for a loan, he could demand compensation (damna et interesse) if he was not repaid on time. Interesse referred to the compensation made by a debtor to a creditor for damages caused to the creditor as a result of default or delays in the repayment of the principal, corresponding to any loss incurred or gain forgone on the creditor’s part.12 This provision opened the door to the taking of interest, since the courts assumed that there had been a genuine delay and that a bona fide loss had occurred. By making very short-term loans and simulating delay (mora) in repayment, interest could be concealed. Payment could also be demanded under the doctrine relating to lucrum cessans. As well as compensation for damage suffered, the lender could be compensated for the gain that had been sacrificed when money was lent. A creditor with capital invested in a business could claim compensation on this account, and the growing opportunities for trade made it easier to prove that gain had escaped him. A wide range of financial transactions could be legitimized in this way, especially since a special reward could be claimed by the lender because of the risk which had been incurred. International transactions The international dimension could also be utilized. If the asset concerned was a foreign one, the price at which the sale was concluded could be used to conceal that the transaction was really the combination of a loan with a foreign exchange transaction. The most typical case was that of the bill of exchange, and special ‘foreign exchange fairs’ which operated between l553 and 1763 were held at regular intervals, usually four times a year, largely for the purpose of issuing bills payable there and organizing foreign exchange clearing (Kindleberger, 1984; de Cecco, 1992). Usually a medieval bill of exchange transaction consisted of the sale for local currency of an obligation to pay a specified sum in another currency at a future date. It thus involved both an extension of credit and an exchange of currency. A present-day bank would handle this transaction by converting the foreign into the local currency at the ruling spot rate of exchange, and then charging a rate of discount for the credit extended when paying out cash now for cash later. To do so in the Middle Ages would have been usurious, for discounting was not an allowable activity. Consequently, by not separating the two elements involved, the medieval banker bought the bill at a price which incorporated both an element of interest and a charge for his services as an exchange dealer. Many Islamic scholars would contend that much the same concealment underlies the murabaha (or mark-up) techniques used by Islamic banks today where the mark-up is meant to incorporate service fees alone, but has the appearance of interest.
Slide 92: 74 Handbook of Islamic banking Of course, the Medieval banker then had an open book which had to be closed by reversing the transaction and buying a bill in the foreign location, and receiving payment in his own currency. The fluctuation of exchange rates provided a convincing case of risk, since the terms at which the reverse deal could be undertaken would not be guaranteed at the time of the original transaction. It was this risk that reconciled bill dealing with the laws.13 Once the bill of exchange became admissible, it was a short step to lend money domestically by means of fictitious exchange transactions involving drafts and redrafts between two places. For example, a merchant needing cash would get it from an Italian banker by drawing a bill on the banker’s own correspondent at the fairs of Lyons or Frankfurt. When this bill matured, it would be cancelled by a redraft issued by the correspondent and payable by the borrowing merchant to his creditor, the banker. Thus the latter would recover the money which he had lent. To confuse the theologian, the real nature of the cambio con la ricorsa, as it was called, was clouded in technical jargon and was further obscured by clever manipulations in the books of the banker and of his correspondent. But once these trimmings were stripped away, it was simply discounting taking place under the cover of fictitious currency exchanges (de Roover, 1954, 1963). Many bankers had a guilty conscience about getting around the usury laws in this way, as reflected by those of their number who included in their wills and testaments a distribution to the Church or to the needy in restitution for their illicit returns (Galassi, 1992). Other bankers institutionalized their attempt to buy ‘a passport to heaven’. In fourteenthcentury Florence, the Bardi and Peruzzi banks regularly set aside part of their annual profits for distribution to the poor, holding the funds in an account under the name of Messer Domineddio, Mr God-Our-Lord (ibid., p. 314). Income conversions Converting interest income into permitted sources of earnings lay at the heart of all of the techniques, including those above. Land provided the vehicle for the one form of investment that was widely understood and universally practised, even by the Church itself. This was the rent charge. Those with funds to lend could purchase a contract to pay so much from the rents of certain lands or houses or premises in return for the sum outlaid. For example, around 1500 , £10 a year for £100 down was about a normal rate in England. Such an investment was not regarded as usurious, despite being as fixed, certain and safe in medieval conditions as any loan. As in most legal systems, observance of the letter rather than the spirit of the law often took precedence. Islamic hiyal Not surprisingly, the same pressures to follow ‘form’ over ‘substance’ in commercial dealings existed in the Islamic countries, and at much the same time. Commercial practice was brought into conformity with the requirements of the shari’a by the hiyal or ‘legal devices’ which were often legal fictions (Schacht, 1964). It seems quite likely that many of these hiyal were conveyed to medieval Europe by Muslim traders, presumably through the principles and practice of the triangular international trade and commerce which connected the Islamic countries, Byzantium and (at that stage) the relatively undeveloped West. Muslim merchants, like those in the West, utilized the potential of the bill of exchange to (and perhaps beyond) the limits of the law. Another device consisted of giving real property as a security for the debt and allowing the creditor to use it, so that its use
Slide 93: Comparing Islamic and Christian attitudes to usury 75 represented the interest. This arrangement was not dissimilar to the rent charge. Closely related to this transaction was the sale of property with the right of redemption (bay’ al-wafa’, bay’ al-‘uhda). A popular technique consisted of the double sale (bay ‘atan fi bay’a). For example, the (prospective) debtor sells to the (prospective) creditor an item for cash, and immediately buys it back from him for a greater amount payable at a future date. This amounts to a loan with the particular item concerned as security, and the difference between the two prices represents the interest. Schacht claims that there were ‘hundreds’ of such devices used by traders cum moneylenders, all with a scrupulous regard for the letter of the law.14 It goes without saying, of course, that from an Islamic perspective these legal fictions or hiyal are strictly prohibited. Partnerships Some of the more approved modes of Islamic financing also featured in medieval Europe. Since the legal form of the financing was what ultimately mattered, the owner and the prospective user of funds could, as an alternative to arranging a loan, form a partnership (nomine societatis palliatum), with profit and loss divided among them in various ways. What was of crucial importance, theologically, was that the provider of funds had to share in the partner’s risk. That proviso rendered the arrangement broadly equivalent to that of the Islamic musharaka, under which an entrepreneur and investor jointly contribute funds to a venture, and divide up the profits and losses according to a predetermined ratio. Finance-based partnerships involving merchants find mention in Islamic sources around 700 CE, but the origins in the West (the commenda and the compagnia) go back no further than the tenth century (Lopez, 1979). Of course, it was also possible to use the partnership form as a legal fiction to cloak what was really interest rate lending in all but name. For example, a person might have lent money to a merchant on the condition that he be a partner in the gains, but not in the losses. Another favourite method, used particularly in the City of London, was for the ‘partner’ providing funds to be a ‘sleeping one’ to conceal the borrowing and lending of money. Even more complicated devices such as the contractus trinus (triple contract) were devised which, while approved by custom and law, caused much theological strife.15 Mudaraba-type investments More interesting still was the existence in Middle Ages Europe of mudaraba-type arrangements when the medieval banks took in funds from depositors. Under these types of account no fixed return was specified but the depositor was offered a share or participation in the profits of the bank. For example, on 17 November 1190, a servant of the famous Fieschi family entrusted ‘capital’ of £7 Genoese to the banker Rubeus upon condition that he could withdraw his deposit on 15 days’ notice and that he would receive a ‘suitable’ return on his money (de Roover, 1954, p. 39). Much closer to present-day mudaraba were the investment modes offered by the Medici Bank. For example, the famous diplomat and chronicler Philippe de Commines (1447–1511) placed with the Lyons branch of Medici a time deposit which, instead of yielding a fixed percentage, entitled him to participate in the profits ‘at the discretion’ of the bank (depositi a discrezione). As another illustration, the contract between this same bank and Ymbert de Batarnay, Seigneur du Bouchage, concerning a deposit in 1490 of 10 000 écus does not mention any
Slide 94: 76 Handbook of Islamic banking fixed rate, but states, on the contrary, that this sum was to be employed in lawful trade and the profits accruing therefrom were to be shared equally between the contracting parties (de Roover, 1948, p. 56). The historian Raymond de Roover called this ‘strange behaviour’ and dismissed the practice as merely a legal deception to skirt the usury laws. Viewed from the perspective of current Islamic banking, however, the arrangement seems an entirely appropriate response, valid in its own right. It would thus be fascinating to know how widespread this type of contract was (it was obviously in operation for over 300 years), and why it later fell into disuse. The Christian retreat With the advent of the mercantile era (c.1500–1700) the practice of the taking of interest, which had been forbidden by the Church, gradually came to be accepted (although cases involving usury were still being heard in England in the reign of Elizabeth ) and eventually sanctioned. Why did the prohibition on usury break down throughout Europe? Growth in commerce Tawney was the first to connect this shift in religious thought with the rise in commerce. He argued that economic growth swelled the channels for profitable investment to such an extent that the divorce between theory and reality had become almost unbridgeable. Greater investment opportunities made the usury laws more costly and tiresome to enforce, while the devices to get around the prohibition had become so numerous that everyone was concerned with the form rather than the substance of transactions. In effect, the ban had become unworkable and the rulings themselves were brought into disrepute. When the bans were introduced in the early Middle Ages, the Church itself was the centre of economic life, and canon law was concerned with ensuring that its own representatives were kept in line. As the outside market grew and commerce expanded, more and more activity moved outside the controlled (that is non-usury) sector. At first, the Church extended the ban on usury to the non-controlled activities. When the market continued to expand, and the legal devices to circumvent the regulations expanded also, the Church’s condemnations became at first more strident and its penalties more severe as it tried to keep a lid on the expansion of interest transactions. But at some point the tide turned. As the thinly disguised interest economy continued to grow, more and more were willing to seek immediate gains in the present world and take their chances in the hereafter, hoping that a deathbed confession and token restitution would ensure an easier route to salvation. The Church itself was forced to devote more of its energies to examining the accounts of moneylenders and merchants in order to root out the various subterfuges used to conceal usury. In short, the cost of maintaining and policing the prohibition increased to such an extent that it became desirable all round to remove the irksome controls. Then the problem, of course, was how to save face and break from the past, particularly when so much intellectual capital and moral fervour had been devoted to the issue. It was necessary to avoid the charge of hypocrisy or moral backsliding. In this case the solution came in the form of the challenge to the orthodoxy of Catholicism from the rise of Protestantism associated with the names of Luther and Calvin.
Slide 95: Comparing Islamic and Christian attitudes to usury 77 Calvin and the rise of Protestantism Luther was rather ambivalent on the topic of usury, but Calvin was not. His stand (in a series of letters beginning in 1547) denying that the taking of payment for the use of money was in itself sinful has been hailed as a ‘turning point in the history of European thought’ (Ashley [1888, 1893]1913), as the foundation stone of the ‘spirit of capitalism’ (Weber, 1930) and the ‘Gospel of the modern era’ (Nelson, 1949). Much earlier, St Paul had declared that the ‘New Convenant’ between Jesus and the people had superseded the old covenant of Mosaic law, so that Judaic law was no longer binding on Christian society (Letter to the Romans, ch.3). Calvin went further. He argued that neither the old Halakic code nor the rulings of the Gospels were universally applicable and binding for all time, because they were shaped by and designed for conditions that no longer exist. Rather they should be interpreted in the light of individual conscience, the equity of the ‘golden rule’ (do unto others as you would have them do unto you) and the needs of society.16 Thus under Calvin’s reformation the lender is no longer a pariah but a useful part of society. Usury does not conflict with the law of God in all cases and, provided that the interest rate is reasonable, lending at interest is no more unjust than any other economic transaction; for example, it is as reasonable as the payment of rent for land. Although Calvin repudiated the Aristotelian doctrine that money was infertile, he nonetheless identified instances in which the taking of interest would be an act of sinful usury, as in the case of needy borrowers oppressed by circumstances and faced with exorbitant interest rates. But these are problems inherent in the social relations of a Christian community, to be solved in the light of existing circumstances and the dictates of natural law and the will of God, not by blanket prohibition. Redefining usury Calvin’s doctrine has become the language of modern (or at least non-evangelical) Protestant Christianity. However, in terms of usury laws, the practical reality of the time was that everyone who sought a more liberal approach to usury turned to Calvin for support. Throughout Protestant Europe, governments embraced his views to abolish the legal prohibition of interest. Somewhat earlier, after Henry ’s break with Rome, a statute was enacted in England in 1545 legalizing interest but limiting it to a legal maximum of 10 per cent, and legislation laying down a maximum rate in place of a prohibition of interest was made permanent by law in 1571. Such ‘usury laws’ became the norm thereafter in Protestant Europe. The retreat of Catholic canon law was in general slower and involved the concession of exceptions while clinging to the principle. Nevertheless, in the nineteenth century, the Roman Catholic authorities also relented by the issuance of some 14 decisions of the Congregations of the Holy Office, the Penitentiary and the Propaganda stating that the faithful who lend money at moderate rates of interest are ‘not to be disturbed’, provided that they are willing to abide by any future decisions of the Holy See. Nonetheless, the Church still provides in the Code of Canon Law (c.2354) severe penalties for those convicted of usury in the modern sense, that is excessive interest (Nelson, 1949: Divine, 1967). Consequently, from a modernist perspective, the great achievement of Calvin and his followers was, in effect, to have turned Deuteronomy on its head. Finding a solution to the troublesome ‘Deuteronomic double standard’ had long worried Christian theologians imbued with ideas of universal fraternity. Amongst the early Church, the distasteful
Slide 96: 78 Handbook of Islamic banking implication that usury was lawful when levied upon some (‘foreigners’) but unlawful and sinful when applied to others (‘brothers’) was initially resolved by not charging interest to anyone. Following Calvin, the resolution came about instead by charging usury to all, but at a rate deemed to be not injurious. Can Islam sustain its ban on usury? This chapter has shown that the Christian Church maintained a prohibition on usury (interest) for over 1400 years and, once the terminological differences are sorted out and the doctrinal sources examined, it is apparent that the official Christian objection to usury was almost identical to the Islamic position. Moreover, some of the financing methods used by Christians to conform with the Church’s opposition to usury were quite consistent with the spirit of the law and similar to the preferred modes of Islamic financing, such as musharaka and mudaraba. This raises a question. Will Islam, nearly 1400 years after the Prophet’s revelations, go the same way as Christianity and relax its ban on interest? Notwithstanding the similarities between the Christian and the Islamic positions on interest, there were differences, too. In fact, the divergences between the two religions on their stance about usury go a long way to explaining why Christianity relaxed and eventually retreated from the ban on usury, while Islam has not. One factor was the lack in the Christian creed of an overriding injunction on the subject like that in the Holy Qur’an. That deficiency, along with ambiguities on related issues such as the acceptability of trade, opened up Catholicism to the inroads of Protestant revisionist interpretations on usury. Another difference came from the severity of the temporal penalties applied to usurers by the Christian ecclesiastical courts. These inhibited much legitimate trade and at the same time raised the incentive to evade the prohibition in the form of taking advantage of various legal loopholes, which brought the institution itself into disrepute because of the transparency of some of the devices. At the same time, however, it can also be claimed with considerable justification that in medieval Christendom too much time was devoted to evasion, and by the Church to condemning and rooting out the evaders, than to finding acceptable non-interest alternatives to usury. In Islam, compliance has been left as a matter for the individual (and his Maker), but the Islamic community and the Islamic bankers have spent much effort examining the legitimacy of particular transactions and formalizing procedures which have enabled everyday banking, finance and commerce to be conducted on an halal basis. On this interpretation, a key factor governing the success of Islamic banking and finance is product innovation – fashioning instruments which remain genuinely legitimate, in the sense of meeting the spirit as well as the letter of the law, while responding to the ever-changing financial needs of business and commerce. Many examples of such product innovation are given in later chapters. Nevertheless, there are also some dissenting voices in the Islamic community on the legitimacy of many of these products. These critics feel uneasy with many of the directions that Islamic financing has taken. In this respect, they wonder whether the battle against riba may have already been lost because many of the activities, such as mark-up techniques and sukuk, essentially replicate, with some modifications, interest rate banking and, to this degree, amount to hiyal, legal fictions. The critics hold to this view because these financial instruments are seen to be structured in such a way that they generate virtually fixed returns to investors, with little risk, violating the spirit, if not the letter, of
Slide 97: Comparing Islamic and Christian attitudes to usury 79 the Qur’anic injunction. These criticisms of Islamic banking practices are also matters that are explored in later chapters. Notes 1. 2. The chapter draws extensively upon Lewis (1999). The Middle Ages usually refers to the period in Europe, between the disintegration of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE and the onset of the Italian Renaissance, and covering an area stretching from Sweden to the Mediterranean. This was the period when the Church had vast secular and religious authority and was a universal and unifying force across Christian countries. For our purposes, we need to extend the analysis to at least the sixteenth century, for the great medieval unity of Christendom – and its views on usury – went largely unchallenged until the Protestant Reformation and the rise of Calvinism. This and other passages below come from the Authorised Version or King James Version of 1611 prepared by scholars in England. This practice was often rationalized as an instrument of warfare. Pope Alexander  in 1159 argued that ‘Saracens and heretics’ whom it had not been possible to conquer by force of arms would be compelled under the weight of usury to yield to the Church (Nelson, 1949, p. 15). The Church’s position is outlined in Jones (1989), Le Goff (1979, 1984), Nelson (1949), Noonan (1957). Platonic and Greek economic thought is explained by Trever (1916) and Langholm (1984). There is similarity here to the Rabbinic rulings in the Mishna, the collection of legal interpretations of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Loans of goods and speculative trading in wheat are ruled as morally equivalent to usury (Baba Mesia 5:1) (Levine, 1987). The description owes to Keen (1997). For example, a special place is reserved for the usurer in the Inferno, volume 1 of the classic by Dante Alighieri (1265–1321). See Dante ([1314] 1984). All of these actions were recommended in Thomas Wilson’s Discourse upon Usury (1572) quoted in Nelson (1949). From the commentary of the Persian–Arab scholar Abu1-Qasim Mahmud ibn Umar az-Zamakhshari completed in 1134 CE, as reported in Gätje (1997). The compensation originated from id quod interest of Roman law, which was the payment for damages due to the nonfulfilment of a contractual obligation (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1947 edn). Owing to the slowness of communications at that time, even a sight draft was a credit instrument, since time elapsed while it was travelling from the place where it was issued to the place where it was payable. The theologians insisted upon the observance of the distantia loci (difference in place), but they tended to play down the fact that the difference in place necessarily incorporated a difference in time (dilatio temporis). As the jurist Raphael de Turri, or Raffaele della Torre (c.1578–1666), put it succinctly: distantia localis in cambio involvit temporis dilationem (distance in space also involves distance in time). Although he could not deny that a cambium (exchange) contract was a loan mixed with other elements, he wrote a treatise full of references to Aristotle, Aquinas and a host of scholastic doctors in order to establish that exchange dealings were not tainted with any usury. In other words, the exchange transaction was used to justify profit on a credit transaction (de Roover, 1967). The first and simplest hiyal were probably thought out by the interested parties who felt the need for them, the merchants in particular, but it was quite beyond them to invent and apply the more complicated ones. They would have had to have recourse to specialists with knowledge of the shari’a. The early development of Islamic law is examined by Lindholm (1996). The kind of loan which the Church condemned – a loan in which the creditor claimed interest from the beginning of the loan and stipulated the return of his principal, whether the enterprise was successful or not – could be considered a combination of three separate contracts. The components were a commenda in the form of a sleeping partnership, an insurance contract against the loss of the principal, and an insurance contract against fluctuations in the rate of profit. What clearly was legal was that A could enter into partnership with B; he could further insure the principal against loss with C and contract with D against loss caused by fluctuations in profits. The essence of the triple contract was that it combined three separate contracts which were legal when struck in isolation between different parties, but when combined and made between just two parties had the effect of contracting for an advance of money at a fixed rate of interest. If it was lawful for A to make these three contracts separately with B, C and D, why was it not possible for A to make all three of them with B? This was the dilemma posed by the triple contract. Pope Sixtus  denounced the triple contract in 1585 in response to Luther’s offensive against the Church’s position in his Tract on Trade and Usury. Nevertheless, it led to a religious quandary and perhaps even hastened along the removal of the ban on usury (Nelson, 1949; Anwar, 1987; Taylor and Evans, 1987). There are some obvious parallels to be drawn here in terms of the ‘modernist’ or ‘revisionist’ views on riba, associated with the name of Fazlur Rahman. See Chapter 2 above. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.
Slide 98: 80 Handbook of Islamic banking References al-Qaradawi, Yusuf (1989), The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam, Kuwait: International Islamic Federation of Student Organisations. Anwar, Muhammad (1987), Modelling Interest-Free Economy: A Study in Macroeconomics and Development, Herndon, Virginia: International Institute of Islamic Thought. Aquinas, Thomas, trans. (1955), Summa Theologica, London: Oxford University Press. Ashley, W.J. ([1888, 1893]1913), An Introduction to English Economic History and Theory, 2 vols, London. Baldwin, J.W. (1970), Masters, Printers and Merchants, vol. 2, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Cohn, H.H. (1971), Sv ‘Usury’, Encyclopedia Judaica, Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, pp. 17–33. Dante, Alighieri ([1314]1984), The Divine Comedy, vol. 1, Inferno, trans. Mark Musa, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd. De Cecco, M. (1992), ‘Genoese exchange fairs’, in P. Newman, M. Milgate and J. Eatwell (eds), The New Palgrave Dictionary of Money and Finance, vol. 3, London: Macmillan. De Roover, Raymond (1948), The Medici Bank: its Organisation, Management, Operations and Decline, New York: New York University Press. De Roover, Raymond (1954), ‘New interpretations of the history of banking’, Journal of World History, Paris: Librairie des Mieridiens, pp. 38–76. De Roover, Raymond (1963), The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank, 1397–1494, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. De Roover, Raymond (1967), ‘The Scholastics, usury and foreign exchange’, Business History Review, 43, 257–71. Divine, T.F. (1967), Sv ‘Usury’, New Catholic Encyclopedia, New York: McGraw-Hill, pp. 498–500. El-Awa, M.S. (1983), Punishment in Islamic Law: A Comparative Study, Delhi: Marzi Maktaba Islami. Galassi, F.L. (1992), ‘Buying a passport to heaven: usury, restitution and the merchants of medieval Genoa’, Religion, 22, 313–26. Gätje, Helmut (1997), The Qur’an and its Exegesis, Oxford: Oneworld Publications. Glaeser, E.L. and J.A. Scheinkman (1998), ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be: an economic analysis of interest restrictions and usury laws’, Journal of Law and Economics, 41 (1), 1–36. Gordon, B. (1982), ‘Lending at interest: some Jewish, Greek and Christian approaches. 800 BC–AD 100’, History of Political Economy, 14, 406–26. Jones, N. (1989), God and the Moneylenders, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Keen, S. (1997), ‘From prohibition to depression: the Western attitude to usury’, Accounting, Commerce and Finance: The Islamic Perspective Journal, 1 (1), 26–55. Kindleberger, C.P. (1974), The Formation of Financial Centres: a Study in Comparative Economic History, Princeton Studies in International Finance, No. 36, and Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kindleberger, C.P. (1984), A Financial History of Western Europe, London: George Allen & Unwin. Langholm, O. (1984), The Aristotelian Analysis of Usury, Bergen: Bergen Universitetsforiaget; distributed in the USA by Columbia University Press, New York. Le Goff, Jacques (1979), ‘The usurer and purgatory’, The Dawn of Modern Banking, Los Angeles: Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies, University of California, pp. 25–52. Le Goff, Jacques (1984), The Birth of Purgatory, trans. A. Goldhammer, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Levine, Aaaron (1987), Economics and Jewish Law: Halakhic Perspective, Hoboken: Ktav and Yeshiva University Press. Lewis, M.K. (1999), ‘The cross and the crescent: comparing Islamic and Christian attitudes to usury’, AL-IQTISHAD, Journal of Islamic Economics, 1 (1), Nuharram, 1420H/April, 1–23. Lindholm, C. (1996), The Islamic Middle East. An Historical Anthropology, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Lopez, Robert Sabatino (1979), ‘The dawn of medieval banking’, The Dawn of Modern Banking, Los Angeles Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies, University of California, pp. 1–24. Maimonides, Moses (1956), The Guide for the Perplexed, New York: Dover Publications. Nelson, Benjamin (1949), The Idea of Usury: From Tribal Brotherhood to Universal Otherhood, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Noonan, John T. (1957), The Scholastic Analysis of Usury, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Patinkin, D. (1968), ‘Interest’, International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, London: Macmillan. Rabinovich, L. (1993), ‘Introduction to secured transactions in Halakha and common law’, Tradition, 27(3), 36–50. Razi, Muhammad Fakr al-Din ([1872] 1938), Mafatih al-Ghayb known as al-Tafsir al-Kabir, Bulaq Cairo: Dar Ibya al-Kutub al-Bahiyya. Roll, E. (1953), A History of Economic Thought, London: George Allen & Unwin. Russell, Bertrand (1946), History of Western Philosophy, London: George Allen & Unwin. Schacht, J. (1964), An Introduction to Islamic Law, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Slide 99: Comparing Islamic and Christian attitudes to usury 81 Sinclair, T. (1962) (trans.), The Politics of Aristotle, revised T. Saunders (1981), Penguin Classics, London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd. Tawney, R.H. (1926), Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, London and New York: Harcourt Brace. Taylor, T.W. and J.W. Evans (1987), ‘Islamic banking and the prohibition of usury in Western economic thought’, National Westminster Bank Quarterly Review, November, 15–27. Temin, Peter and Hans-Joachim Voth (2004), ‘Financial repression in a natural experiment: loan allocation and the change in the usury laws in 1714’, available from the SSRN Electronic Paper Collection: CEPR Discussion Paper No. 4452, June. Thomson, J.A.K. (1953) (trans.), The Ethics of Aristotle, Penguin Classics, London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd. Trever, Albert (1916), Greek Economic Thought, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Weber, Max (1930), Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus, in Gesammelte Aufsazte zur Religionssoziologic, I. Originally appeared in the Archiv fur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, xx–xxi, 1904–05. English trans. Talcott Parsons with a Foreword by R.H. Tawney, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, London: Collins.
Slide 101: PART II OPERATIONS OF ISLAMIC BANKS
Slide 103: 6 Incentive compatibility of Islamic financing Humayon A. Dar Islamic financing modes Islamic modes of financing are classified into fixed-return (such as murabaha, ijara, salam and istisnaa) and variable-return (mainly mudaraba and musharaka). The two classes provide different sets of incentives to providers of capital and its users in Islamic financial arrangements. Fixed-return modes, for example, offer residual rights of control and management to users of the capital or funds made available by investors. Consequently, Islamic financial institutions are inclined to offer financing based on fixed-return modes of financing like murabaha and ijara (the two most widely used contracts in Islamic banking and finance the world over) because they offer built-in incentives to the users of funds to maximize their economic interests by keeping on honouring their financial commitment to the financier. This, in turn, minimizes possibility of default on the part of the businesses or individuals acquiring finance on the basis of fixed-return modes. A specific example of such a financial arrangement is ijara-based and murabaha-based mortgages offered by Islamic banks and financial institutions. The households/individuals acquiring houses with the help of such mortgages exclusively benefit from capital gains accruing from appreciation in the property value during the mortgage period.1 This is a sufficient incentive for such customers to keep on honouring their financial commitment to the financing institution. The variable-return mode of financing, on the other hand, offers the possibility of sharing residual financial rights between the financier and the user of funds. While it may offer some benefits in terms of improved productivity and profitability, it is also subject to the agency problem giving rise to moral hazard and adverse selection problems (see Dar and Presley, 1999). More specifically, the mudaraba contract is essentially a skewed contract that favours the user of funds more than the capital provider. This creates imbalances in management and control functions, a technical reason for lack of its popularity as a mode of financing (see Dar and Presley, 2000). Although mudaraba remains the most dominant way of collecting deposits by Islamic banks, it requires close scrutiny and additional regulation to impose the required discipline on the management of banks (see Muljawan, Dar and Hall, 2004). Consequently, variable-return modes of financing have seen rather limited application especially in Islamic retail banking. Islamic investment accounts, based on mudaraba, although fair and just to both savers and banks, do not cater for relatively risk-averse individuals who prefer the schemes generating regular streams of income. While Islamic savings accounts, based on the concept of wadi’a (safe custody), tend to fill this vacuum, they require rather a liberal juristic application of Islamic financial principles to offer contractually ensured regular return to investors. There are very few Islamic saving vehicles that are genuinely Islamic in the sense that they do not offer capital protection and regular income while remaining within the Islamic framework. For example, Islamic savings accounts offering capital protection do so by the use of wadi’a, but a contractual regular income is offered only as a compromised solution. 85
Slide 104: 86 Handbook of Islamic banking The incentive compatibility of Islamic modes of financing is indeed important for further development of viable Islamic structures for Islamic financial institutions. In the absence of two-way incentive compatibility, it is difficult to develop shari’a-compliant structures for options, forward, futures and other complex derivative contracts. This chapter discusses the issue of incentive compatibility in detail to derive some implications for financial engineering in Islamic finance. Incentive compatibility: an introduction For a financial structure to work on its own, the transacting parties involved should have sufficient incentives to stick to the terms of the contract; otherwise the structure will make little sense. For example, a simple sale contract between a buyer and a seller takes place only if there is synchronization of needs and agreement on price. In a conventional loan contract, stipulation of interest ensures that the borrower returns the principal sum plus the agreed interest on it. In the event of default, the borrower faces an accumulation of interest, which in fact is a major deterrent to default. In a murabaha-based sale contract for deferred payment, such a deterrent is less effective in the absence of a penalty clause. However, it offers less protection to the financier as they cannot benefit from the proceeds of penalty, which are paid out to some designated charities. This less favourable treatment of the financier may in fact result in higher pricing of Islamic products based on murabaha. As a matter of fact, this is actually the case in the widespread use of murabaha in the Islamic finance industry. The relative dearness of Islamic financial products has proved to be a disincentive to the use of such services in well-informed and competitive environments.2 This interrelatedness of different incentives/disincentives complicates the matter further. Therefore it is important to understand the root-cause of incentive compatibility (wherever it exists in Islamic banking) to develop products/structures that may provide better incentives to the transacting parties. Other than the differences in terms of incentive compatibility, fixed-return Islamic modes and conventional modes like interest are quite comparable. There are certain cases in which classical Islamic arrangements do not offer sufficient incentives to the transacting parties to enter into meaningful economic transactions. For example, conventional options provide compatible incentives to writers as well as buyers of options, who mutually benefit in terms of risk reduction and hedging. The Islamic concept of undertaking (or what is known as wa’d) on the other hand, does not offer sufficient economic incentives to the two parties to enter into arrangements similar to conventional options. The undertaking offers incentive compatibility in a number of financial arrangements, when used in conjunction with other contracts. For example, murabaha-based sales cannot work in the absence of a purchase order by the client (buyer) of an Islamic financial institution. The purchase order in this context is nothing more than an undertaking to buy the asset-to-be-financed from the bank once it has purchased it from the market. This is a binding promise on behalf of the buyer who cannot renege on it without facing financial implications. In the absence of such an undertaking, murabaha-based sales contain too large a legal risk to be used as a mode of financing. Similarly, Islamic mortgages based on ijara wa iqtina and diminishing musharaka are not very useful in the absence of an undertaking on the part of the financing institution to sell the house/property to the client at the end of the mortgage period. Other Islamic contracts also offer relatively less compatible incentives to one of the
Slide 105: Incentive compatibility of Islamic financing 87 Table 6.1 Incentive features of some Islamic financing modes Incentive compatibility Marginally less Remedial measures Penalty clause, undertaking from buyer Undertaking from financier Parallel salam Parallel istisnaa Strong monitoring and supervision Strong monitoring and supervision Modes Murabaha Residual rights Fund user Control rights Fund user Ijara wa iqtina Salam Istisnaa Mudaraba Fund user Financier Shared Shared Financier Fund user Shared Fund user Moderately less Moderately less Moderately less Significantly less Musharaka Shared Shared Significantly less parties, especially when they are used in their traditional (classical) form. Salam, for example, is proposed to be used mainly for financing of agriculture,3 which exposes the financier to the price risk of the underlying asset – a feature less attractive as compared with a straightforward (but prohibited) interest-based loan (for relative inefficiency of salam contracts, see Ebrahim and Rahman, 2005). This incentive incompatibility of salam is reduced by allowing the financier to enter into a parallel salam contract with a third party to hedge against price risk. A similar argument holds for creating sufficiently compatible istisnaa structures, which also requires entering into a parallel istisnaa contract. Incentive incompatibilities are most significant in the case of the variable-return modes, which require extensive measures to reduce them to a tolerable level. These measures include (1) ensuring creditworthiness of the users of funds and their proven record of successful business experience; (2) investing in highly credit-rated businesses; (3) stipulating additional conditions in the mudaraba contract to minimize risks for the fund providers; (4) stage financing; (5) periodic progress reports to minimize informational asymmetries; (6) the use of restricted mudaraba rather than unrestricted financing; and (7) third-party guarantees (see Yousri Ahmad, 2005). Table 6.1 provides a summary of residual rights, control rights, nature of incentives and remedial measures of incentive incompatibility for different Islamic modes of financing, as compared to interest-based financing. While these measures may make Islamic financing more efficient, it appears as if this will widen the gulf between the developmental objective of Islamic finance and its actual practice. Incentive compatibility in options, forward and derivative contracts Although incentive compatibility is relevant to all financial contracts, it is particularly important in writing incentive-compatible contracts for modern financial institutions and
Slide 106: 88 Handbook of Islamic banking markets. Modern financial markets in options, futures and forward contracts provide sufficient incentives for transacting parties to enter voluntarily into financial contracts. Islamic alternatives are either linked to real (physical) trading or do not provide sufficient incentives for voluntary transacting. For example, a put option gives its holder the right to sell a certain quantity of an underlying security to the writer of the option at a strike price. The holder of the put option pays a premium for this option. Similarly, the holder of a call option pays a premium to have the right to buy an underlying security at the agreed strike price. Both parties in such option contracts have compatible incentives: one party getting a premium and the other party receiving a right. Islamic alternatives of arbun and wa’d either provide incompatible incentives or have rather limited applicability to financial options. Arbun is a non-refundable deposit paid by a buyer to retain a right to cancel or confirm the sale during a certain period of time. Although tipped as a candidate for an Islamic call option, arbun does not offer sufficient incentives for voluntary transacting, as compared to a conventional call. The requirement that the deposit should be considered as a part of the settlement price dilutes incentives for the writer of the arbun-based call because, in the event of the confirmation of sale, the writer is worse off as compared with a writer of the conventional call. The writer of the arbun-based call, however, benefits when the option holder does not exercise his option, in which case the writer retains the deposit. One possible way of increasing incentives for the writer of an arbun-based call is to contract on a price higher than the market price of the security, but this may cause dilution of incentives for the buyer who will have less freedom of choice in exercising his option. To make arbun offer compatible incentives to buyers and sellers, there must be institutional mechanisms to enter into parallel arbun contracts to hedge against price risks accruing to the seller. This, however, complicates the overall structure, which requires enabling legal frameworks. Such legal and institutional provisions do not exist at present, although some initial work is being undertaken by the law firms specializing in Islamic finance. A government-level or industry-level effort in this direction has yet to take place. Wa’d, which is less complicated than other alternatives including arbun, is a simple undertaking on the part of a seller or a buyer to sell/buy on a future date (or during a certain time period) for a contractually agreed price. This is binding on the undertaker subject to the following conditions: (a) the promise should be unilateral; (b) it must have caused the promisee to incur some costs/liabilities; (c) if the promise is to purchase something, the actual sale must take place at the appointed time by the exchange of offer and acceptance. Mere promise itself should not be taken as a concluded sale; (d) if the promisor reneges on their promise, the court may force them either to purchase the commodity or to pay actual damages to the seller. The actual damages will include the actual monetary loss suffered by the promisee, and must not include the opportunity cost. However, in the absence of a premium, merely undertaking to buy or sell does not provide sufficient incentives to the transacting parties to enter into meaningful financial arrangements. Creating incentive-compatible structures Given the conditions attached with wa’d, it can be used to develop innovative structures incorporating characteristics of option contracts. For example, a Party A buys a stock/index
Slide 107: Incentive compatibility of Islamic financing 89 C undertakes to buy: wa’d 1 A C A buys on a murabaha basis B undertakes to buy: wa'd 2 B Figure 6.1 Table 6.2 When Pf A: Pf Structure of a murabaha-based option contract Payoffs under a murabaha-based option contract Pmar 0 When Pf A: Pmur Pmar 0 Pmur B: C: 0 (Pf Pmur) 0 C: 0 B: Pmur 0 from a Party B on a murabaha basis whereby price is deferred to a future date. Another Party, C, unilaterally undertakes to buy (wa’d 1) the asset from A for a specified price during a certain time period (American ‘put’) or at a specified future date (European ‘put’) and B unilaterally undertakes to buy (wa’d 2) the asset from C for a specified price during a certain time period or at a specified future date. The two promises are binding as they fulfil all the requirements imposed by the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) Fiqh Academy for a binding promise. This structure (depicted in Figure 6.1) gives rise to an option contract between Parties A and B, if they hold the respective parties to their promises. Suppose the agreed future price (Pf) is equal to Pmur, murabaha price (which may include a premium to cover the cost of a put), then, in the future, if the agreed future price is greater than the then prevailing price (Pmar), A will make C honour its promise to buy the asset for a price of Pf and C will hold B to its promise to buy the asset for a price of Pf. If Pf Pmar, A will not be interested in the promise given by C, as it will make no economic sense for A to sell the asset at a price lower than its purchase price. Given the payoffs of A (shown in Table 6.2), the structure gives downward protection to the buyer of the asset (A) who also benefits from any upward changes in the stock price. Similarly, Party B is protected against downward changes in price of the stock. However, Party C’s net gain is zero (assuming no transaction costs). In practice, Party C may serve
Slide 108: 90 Handbook of Islamic banking as broker or a clearing house and should be allowed to charge a fixed fee for its services to the other two parties. This fee should be governed by separate independent contracts with the parties, somewhat akin to a membership fee. This is only a simple example of developing Islamic option contracts by using the concept of wa’d and murabaha. In fact, this methodology allows us to develop numerous tailor-made structures allowing options, futures and forward trading in a shari’acompliant manner. Frequent use of these innovative structures and their acceptance in the market is expected to contribute to the development of Islamic markets for options, future and forward contracts, thus providing liquidity in the Islamic finance industry. While developing Islamic options contracts is relatively straightforward, the same cannot be said about futures contracts, as they need to meet more stringent conditions attached to short selling that is deemed shari’a-repugnant. This is one of the reasons for Islamic hedge funds in the past not having been very popular amongst shari’a scholars as well as Islamic investors. However, the methodology outlined in this chapter makes it relatively easy to develop Islamic hedge funds that allow short-selling in a shari’a-compliant manner. Incentive compatibility issues in Islamic hedge funds Numerous strategies are used by hedge fund managers, including, but not limited to, long–short, global macro, arbitrage, distressed securities, opportunistic and aggressive growth. However, long–short strategy (also known as market-neutral) happens to be most widely used. Almost all attempts to set up Islamic hedge funds have tried to replicate shorting in a shari’a-compliant way. The contracts of arbun and salam have so far been used to replicate a short position in an Islamic framework. The question arises if these contracts provide sufficiently compatible incentives to the transacting parties. To understand this issue, we must explain how salam and arbun may be used for shorting as part of a market-neutral strategy. We also discuss the contract of istijrar, albeit briefly. The use of salam for shorting Salam is a sale whereby the seller undertakes to provide some specific commodities to the buyer at a future date for an advance, mutually agreed price paid in full. Although the Accounting and Auditing Organisation for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) disallows using salam for buying shares, there are many practitioners in the Islamic finance industry who believe that salam can be used for implementing shorting strategy in a hedge fund. Suppose an Islamic hedge fund (IHF) identifies a basket of shari’a-compliant commodities the market price of which it expects to fall in future. Therefore, at T0, the IHF promises to sell such commodities to a party, called XXX, for an upfront payment in full to deliver the commodities in future, at date T1. Usually such a price is lower than the market price. At T1, the IHF will buy the promised commodities (to deliver to XXX) at a price that would be expected to be lower than the price charged at T0. The difference between the two prices determines the profit. In a conventional short, however, the hedge fund would borrow the undervalued commodities from the market to sell them to a party for the current market price, expecting that the future market price would be less. If so, the hedge fund would buy such commodities from the market in future to pay them back to the lender. The price differential (after allowing for the borrowing costs) would determine the return for the hedge fund on such a short position.
Slide 109: Incentive compatibility of Islamic financing 91 The IHF may hedge its risk exposure from this salam contract, in case the price expectation reverses, resulting in possible loss for the IHF at T1. For this purpose, the IHF may enter a parallel salam at any time during T0–T1 with another party (YYY) on similar commodities. This time, the IHF will be a buyer and will have the promised commodities delivered to it by YYY at T1. This structure does indeed provide sufficiently compatible incentives to all the transacting parties, and is comparable in terms of its incentive structure with a conventional short strategy in a hedge fund. An alternative strategy, based on the concept of arbun, is equally effective. The use of arbun for shorting Arbun is a sale in which the buyer deposits earnest money with the seller as part-payment of the price in advance, but agrees to forfeit the deposit if he fails to ratify the contract during a specified time period. The strategy works as follows. At T0, the IHF enters into an arbun contract with XXX and promises to deliver the contracted stocks (that IHF considers overvalued at T0) in exchange for a mutually agreed part-price at T0. XXX would pay the remaining price to IHF at T1. This is another shari’a-compliant way of replicating a conventional short. The IHF can use the money received upfront to generate further income from other shari’a-compliant strategies. At T1, the IHF buys the promised stocks (to deliver to XXX) at a price that is expected to be lower than the price charged at T0. The difference in the two prices gives rise to the IHF’s profit. As in the case of salam, the IHF may in fact hedge its risk exposure from the arbun contract by entering into a parallel arbun contract with a third party during T0–T1. The use of istijrar for shorting Istijrar is an innovative arrangement which offers a variety of flexible shari’a-compliant solutions. It is a supply sale whereby the supplier agrees to supply a particular asset (commodities, stocks and so on) on a continual basis at an agreed price to be paid at a future date when the repeated purchases of the buyer from the single seller are completed. It allows purchase/sale of a commodity at a future date (or during a period), enabling the buyer to take delivery of the commodity to pay for it later. In order to short, the IHF must take into account a number of shari’a considerations, as istijrar is not a universally accepted contract in Islamic jurisprudence. The following is only an example of the use of istijrar as a shorting strategy. At T0, the IHF enters into an istijrar facility with XXX to sell shari’a-compliant shares as and when XXX requires. In such an arrangement, XXX pays upfront the then market price of shares it intends to buy from IHF over the istijrar period. The IHF has the liberty to invest this sum in another shari’a-compliant portfolio, including a possibility of going long on some other shares. The master agreement spells out the following: ● ● The allowable range of price movement (upper (PU) and lower (PL) bound around the initial purchase price of the shares, P0). PU is set so as the parties expect that the istijrar price, P*, never reaches it during the istijrar period. PL is, however, set at P0 or a price marginally less than P0. The istijrar price, P*, which may be linked to a market index (e.g., Dow Jones Islamic Market Index).
Slide 110: 92 ● ● ● ● Handbook of Islamic banking The settlement price can either be the istijrar price (P*) or P0, depending on exercise of the option available to both parties. The XXX’s option to fix the price at P0 is activated when the mutually agreed P* touches PU. The IHF’s option to fix the price at P0 is activated when P* touches PL. If a party does not exercise its option following a trigger point in its favour and the opposite bound is pierced in the meantime, the right of the first party will be replaced by the second party’s right of option. At T1, depending on the price movements, one of the transacting parties exercises its option. A series of such transactions may take place during the istijrar period, which must be settled by a chosen date (for a detailed discussion on the structure, see Obaidullah, 1996; Bacha, 1999). This is a sophisticated structure that offers compatible incentives to the transacting parties to behave in such a way as gives rise to a conventional short. All these strategies based on salam, arbun and istijrar offer advantages of a conventional short in a shari’a-compliant way. Innovations in Islamic finance in the recent past have thus enabled Islamic investors to benefit from a range of products and strategies, which make Islamic financing as efficient as conventional methods of finance. The four strategies are summarized in Table 6.3. While salam and arbun are comparable to a commercial short, the hedging against price risk requires entering into parallel salam and arbun. Istijrar, on the other hand, is more flexible, allowing the benefits of short selling to be shared between the buyer and the seller. Table 6.3 A comparison of conventional and Islamic shorting strategies T0 A borrows overvalued stocks from B and sells in the market for the prevailing market price, P0 A sells an overvalued commodity for P0 to B, to be delivered at T1; B makes the payment upfront T1 A buys the stock from the market for a price (P1) lower than P0 and returns them to B TS Incentives If the strategy works, A earns P0 P1 borrowing cost Type of short Conventional short Salam-based short A buys the commodity from the market for P1 P0 and delivers them to B If the strategy works, A earns P1 P0 and possible income generated by the price received in advance B apparently attempts to hedge against future price fluctuations If the price expectations do not materialize and A
Slide 111: Incentive compatibility of Islamic financing 93 Table 6.3 (continued) T0 T1 TS Incentives has to enter into a parallel salam, then A may not earn any positive return or may in fact incur some loss, depending on the price at which parallel salam was made Arbun-based short A sells overvalued stocks to B for P0; B advances a deposit as a part-payment A buys stocks from the market for P1 P0 (subject to B’s demand) If the strategy works, A benefits from the price differential and the additional income that may come from investing the earnest money (deposit received from B) B apparently attempts to hedge itself against future upward price fluctuations If the price goes down sufficiently so that B decides in favour of forfeiting the deposit, A earns the deposit plus income generated from investing it This structure allows short selling, capping benefits to the transacting parties, as defined by the upper and lower bounds Type of short Istijrar-based short A undertakes to sell stocks/ commodities to B as and when B demands them during T0–T1 (subject to conditions set out in the master agreement); B pays an advance sum If the price A and B settle the increases to account touch the upper bound, B exercises its option of fixing the price at Pmur Pmar and gets the asset delivered by A, who buys it from the market (in practice, the upper bound is set too high to
Slide 112: 94 Handbook of Islamic banking (continued) T0 T1 TS Incentives Table 6.3 Type of short (called a facility) be breached) If the price A and B settle decreases to touch the account the lower bound, A exercises its option of fixing the price at Pmur Pmar Conclusions Although Islamic modes of financing in their original forms suffer from some incentive compatibility problems, their modern use and the consequent modifications have addressed a number of such issues successfully. The classical contracts of murabaha, ijara, salam, istisnaa, mudaraba and musharaka have seen a lot of modifications in light of the practical problems faced by the contemporary Islamic finance industry. However, pricing of Islamic financial products has yet to internalize the issue of incentive compatibility, as most Islamic banks remain more expensive than their conventional counterparts. Hybridization of contracts reduces incentive incompatibilities, and this is the route adopted by the Islamic finance industry. This chapter discusses a number of hybrid structures that offer compatible incentives for the transacting parties, as compared with the conventional structures. Organized markets in such hybridized contracts/structures are expected to increase incentive compatibility in Islamic finance. Notes 1. Although some of the existing Islamic mortgages apply the principle of diminishing musharaka, they, however, use it for the gradual transfer of ownership of property to the customer without allowing a sharing of capital gains that may arise as a result of appreciation in the property value. 2. This is probably one of the reasons for potential Islamic clients not having reacted as positively as was expected by an increasing number of providers of Islamic financial services in the UK and other competitive environments. In less competitive environments where Islamic banking has flourished, it is not necessarily due to the economic benefits it offers to its clients; rather it is mainly influenced by religious motivation of the users of Islamic financial services. 3. Salam’s use is not limited to farming. This, in fact, can be used for financing of other shari’a-compliant assets. References Bacha, O.I. (1999), ‘Derivative instruments and Islamic finance: some thoughts for a reconstruction’, International Journal of Islamic Financial Services, 1 (1). Dar, H.A. and J.R. Presley (1999), ‘Islamic finance: a Western perspective’, International Journal of Islamic Financial Services, 1 (1). Dar, H.A. and J.R. Presley (2000), ‘Lack of profit/loss sharing in Islamic finance: management and control imbalances’, International Journal of Islamic Financial Services, 2 (2). Ebrahim, M.S. and S. Rahman (2005), ‘On the Pareto-optimality of conventional futures over Islamic: implications for emerging Muslim economies’, Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organisation, 56 (2), 273–95.
Slide 113: Incentive compatibility of Islamic financing 95 Muljawan, D., H.A. Dar and M.J.B. Hall (2004), ‘A capital adequacy framework for Islamic banks: the need to reconcile depositors’ risk-aversion with managers’ risk-taking’, Applied Financial Economics, 14 (6), 429–41. Obaidullah, M. (1996), ‘Anatomy of Istijrar: a product of Islamic financial engineering’, Journal of Objective Studies, 8 (2), 37–51. Yousri Ahmad, A.R. (2005), ‘Islamic banking modes of finance: proposals for further evolution’, in M. Iqbal and R. Wilson (eds), Islamic Perspectives on Wealth Creation, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 26–46.
Slide 114: 7 Operational efficiency and performance of Islamic banks Kym Brown, M. Kabir Hassan and Michael Skully Introduction Islamic banks have expanded rapidly over the last three decades, but with the exception of some countries, such as Brunei and Iran, they are often in a minority compared with conventional banks even in countries such as Indonesia which have large Muslim populations (Brown, 2003). Nevertheless, Islamic banks are now becoming more accepted and competitive with their commercial counterparts, with approximately US$250 billion in assets and a healthy growth rate of 10–15 per cent p.a. (Hasan, 2004). New Islamic banks are being established, such as the Bank Islami Pakistan Limited in 2005, and existing banks are opening more branches (State Bank of Pakistan, 2005). Conventional financial institutions are now realizing the value of Islamic financing techniques and beginning to incorporate them, either in their lending practices or via separate Islamic departments (or ‘windows’). Hence conventional banks now compete with Islamic institutions both directly and through their own Islamic operations. This raises the question as to how Islamic banks perform compared to their conventional counterparts. This chapter will examine structural and performance differences. Differences between an Islamic bank and a conventional bank may include their ultimate goals. An Islamic bank aims to follow the social requirements of the Qur’an. The relationship an Islamic bank has with its clients is also different. It may offer finance via equity relationships in projects. An Islamic bank is able to undertake direct investments and participate in the management of projects. Indeed, this process can potentially help people even if they reside in developing countries with limited funds but with good projects and ideas to obtain finance. Another common financing technique is the purchase and resale agreement where the Islamic bank effectively purchases the product and then resells it to the client with a specific repayment schedule including a set mark-up. The latter type of transaction is less risky than conventional loans, however equity financing is much more risky because of the potential for the Islamic bank also to share in losses from the project. Our starting point is to examine the operational efficiency and performance of Islamic banks. But what is operational efficiency and why is it an important issue for the Islamic banking system? Islamic bank operations have often been limited in size within most financial systems. Hence, when comparing the performance of these banks, there are few peer banks within a particular country. So, although a number of single country studies exist (e.g. Hassan, 1999; Sarker and Hassan, 2005; Ahmad and Hassan, 2005, examining Bangladesh), there are advantages in examining Islamic bank performance across country borders. Efficiency shows how well a bank performs. During the 1990s especially, there was a fundamental push for banks to lower costs. Hence measures of ‘cost’ efficiency were seen as important. Regulation and other operational aspects of Islamic banking also influence performance. Therefore these will all be examined. 96
Slide 115: Operational efficiency and performance 97 Conceptual differences between Islamic and conventional banking Conventional banking is based upon financing profitable projects with interest lending. Islamic banks avoid interest or riba, and instead invest on a profit or loss basis. Typical types of transactions include leasing, purchase and resale transactions (murabaha and ijara) or profit and loss sharing (mudaraba), trust financing or limited partnership and musharaka, joint venture investment. These techniques were examined in earlier chapters of this Handbook. Part of the social significance of an Islamic bank, relative to a conventional bank, is its social objectives. Conventional banks usually require a person with a business idea also to have some collateral or capital before finance will be granted. Regardless of whether the project is profitable or not, interest will always be levied. The aim of a conventional bank is to fund the most efficient and productive projects. Obviously, from the viewpoint of building ‘relationship banking’, the banker would like the project to succeed. However, even if it does not, the interest and principal has some chance of being recovered. Islamic bank funding, however, can be structured so that the bank’s success can be tied directly to that of the client. They can share in the profits, but also in any losses, hence taking on a more active role. Amongst conventional banks a variety of off-balance sheet activities have assumed considerable importance over the years (Lewis, 1988, 1992). As with conventional banks, Islamic banks can run a banking book and a trading book (Hassan and Choudhury, 2004). This means that they can also deal with off-balance sheet contracts such as letters of credit, foreign exchange and financial advising. Sources of funds for Islamic banks include deposits. Islamic current accounts do not pay any reward and are only used for liquidity purposes, hence there are no profits to share. Savings accounts holders may be able to receive a return called hiba for their investments. An investment account attracts a higher return for depositors, but they also share in the risk of losing money if the bank makes a loss. Money must be deposited for a minimum period of time also. For large investors or institutions further investment accounts may exist. These are usually for a specified large project. In contrast to conventional banks, Islamic banks have an ethical investment charter. Unethical investments in gambling, alcohol or pornography are avoided in line with the Qur’an. As part of their social responsibility, Islamic banks will arrange the payment of zakat, or donations to charitable purposes, which is often listed on their financial statements. This may motivate further supportive zakat payments by other parties when the Islamic bank clearly nominates charitable donations. Muslim consumers are able to gain comfort from investing/borrowing via principles that follow the Qur’an and therefore can help consumers ensure their religious compliance (Ahmad and Hassan, 2007; Sarker and Hassan, 2005). Typically Islamic banks have a shari’a board to ensure that practices comply with the Qur’an. A stronger social standing is therefore required for Islamic banks in society than for conventional banking (see Table 7.1). Ahmad and Hassan (2005) note that, given that shari’a principles require social justice, Islamic banks also take on this responsibility because of the following: a. Islamic banking has certain philosophical missions to achieve. That is, since God is the Creator and Ultimate Owner of all resources, institutions or persons have a vicegerency role to play in society. Therefore Islamic banks are not free to do as they wish; rather they have to integrate moral values with economic action;
Slide 116: 98 Handbook of Islamic banking Fundamental differences between Islamic and conventional banking Conventional banking Part of the capitalistic interest-based financial system Not concerned Not concerned Table 7.1 Islamic banking 1. 2. 3. An advance step toward achievement of Islamic economics Try to ensure social justice/ welfare or the objectives of shari’a Flow of financial resources is in favour of the poor and disadvantaged sections of society Prepare and implement investment plans to reduce the income inequality and wealth disparity between the rich and poor Make arrangements for investment funds for assetless, poor but physically fit people Observe the legitimate and illegitimate criteria fixed by the shari’a in the case of production and investment Implement investment plans on mudaraba and musharaka to stimulate the income of the people below the poverty line Interest and usury is avoided at all levels of financial transactions Depositors bear the risk, no need for deposit insurance The relationship between depositors and entrepreneurs is friendly and cooperative Socially needed investment projects are considered Elimination of the exploitation of interest and its hegemony Islamic banks become partner in the business of the client after sanctioning the credit and bear loss Islamic bank can absorb any endogenous or exogenous shock Islamic banking is committed to implementing welfare-oriented principles of financing Inter-bank transactions are on a profit and loss sharing basis Islamic banks work under the surveillance of the Shari’a Supervisory Boards Lower rate of moral hazard problem because of the brotherhood relationship between the bank and customers Avoids speculation-related financial activites 4. Increase the gap 5. 6. All plans are taken out for the rich No such rules and regulations 7. No such programme 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. The basis of all financial transactions is interest and high-level usury Depositors do not bear any risk, moreover the bank is inclined to pay back principal with a guaranteed interest amount Creditor–debtor relationship Projects below the fixed interest level are not considered Helps to increase capital of the capitalists Do not bear any loss of client 14. 15. Cannot absorb any shock because of the ex ante commitment No such commitment; extend oppression and exploitation On interest basis and create unusual bubble in the market, i.e. exorbitant increase in the call money rate No such surveillance High moral hazard problem because relation is based only on monetary transactions Main functions are speculation-related 16. 17. 18. 19.
Slide 117: Operational efficiency and performance 99 Table 7.1 (continued) Conventional banking No zakat system for the benefit of the poor Islamic banking 20. Bank pays zakat on income and inspires clients to pay zakat, which ensures redistribution of income in favour of the poor The basis of business policy is socioeconomic uplifting of the disadvantaged groups of the society Dual target: implementation of the objectives of shari’a and profit Islamic banks sell and purchase foreign currency on a spot basis, not on forward looking or future basis 21. 22. 23 Profit is the main target of business, or the prime duty is to maximize the shareholders’ value Profit making is the sole objective Spot and forward are both used Source: Ahmad and Hassan (2005). b. c. The ability to provide credit to those who have the talent and the expertise but cannot provide collateral to the conventional financial institutions, thereby strengthening the grass-root foundations of society; and The duty to create harmony in society based on the Islamic concept of sharing and caring in order to achieve economic, financial and political stability. Comparing the operational performance analysis of Islamic banking versus conventional banking This section considers performance figures of the two types of banks. Initially data are compared at the aggregate bank-type level and then more specifically by country and bank type. Given Islamic banks’ ‘social’ significance it may be expected that profitability is lower. Data were collected from the Bankscope database which contains bank level data. The period examined is from 1998 to 2003. The same banks and countries were used for both groups of data. The two main sources of funds for a bank are equity and debt. Banks usually operate with a high leverage ratio (in relation to other non-financial businesses), meaning that they borrow high levels of funds, in relation to equity, to be able to lend out more funds and therefore to increase returns to equity holders. Results indicate that the Islamic banks had a conservative level of equity in relation to liabilities and equity over the period (see Table 7.2). From the figures for 2003, it would seem that the Islamic banks’ structure was converging or reducing to conventional bank levels. However a 4.5 per cent difference in equity to total assets ratio remained. Perhaps the conservative structure relates to the social standing of Islamic banks and could also relate to the fact that Islamic banks are more exposed to business risks than conventional banks. Given the higher equity levels, it might be expected that returns or profitability will also be lower for Islamic banks. Financial institutions need access to funds for net new investment (new financing less repayments of existing finance) and net withdrawals by depositors (when withdrawals exceed new deposits). And, as with any other business form, banks require funds for
Slide 118: Table 7.2 2003 2002 2001 2000 Aggregate performance data for 11 countries: Islamic v. conventional banks (1998–2003) 1999 1998 Structure Capital funds/liabilities Equity/total assets Liquidity Liquid assets/cust. and ST funding Lending Net ‘loans’/total assets 100 Net ‘loans’/cust. and ST funding Performance Cost to income ratio Profitability Return on average equity Return on average assets Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional 20.10 13.50 15.40 10.88 33.46 46.00 54.28 44.28 74.30 56.81 81.06 52.89 12.04 15.04 2.22 1.63 23.64 18.66 18.49 11.60 35.52 52.92 50.71 39.96 66.72 50.46 60.71 60.23 12.44 8.42 2.37 1.00 62.26 16.29 20.77 11.48 66.83 63.68 53.58 40.72 99.09 50.60 73.30 67.53 6.76 1.46 2.35 0.22 35.98 17.22 20.22 11.80 42.13 55.06 53.81 42.18 85.85 51.85 54.12 63.47 17.48 9.76 2.96 0.74 42.90 15.93 21.62 10.55 40.31 55.45 50.52 43.41 81.09 54.51 58.38 62.42 14.82 11.56 1.76 0.02 46.00 15.94 20.08 12.34 42.93 54.60 50.79 44.38 111.04 58.30 58.94 58.29 13.05 12.78 1.47 0.98 Source: Bankscope database.
Slide 119: Operational efficiency and performance 101 day-to-day expenses. Liquidity risk is the possibility that the bank will not have enough funds on hand to be able to meet obligations as they fall due. Returns on liquid assets are generally much lower than returns from funds invested in long-term assets such as loans. The conundrum a bank faces is that holding smaller levels of liquidity increases liquidity risk, whereas, if the bank holds a higher proportion of liquid assets, liquidity risk is minimized but returns such as return on assets (ROA) are likely to be much lower. Liquidity is proxied by liquid assets to customer and short-term funding. Conventional bank operations had a higher level of liquidity. Given that Islamic banks have limited access to Islamic products to use for liquidity purposes, such as Islamic securities, it might have been expected that Islamic banks would have had higher liquidity levels than conventional banks. The mainstay business of a bank is providing new financing. Nevertheless, banks are able to balance their asset portfolio with other investments, such as in securities or bonds. Government bonds are commonly purchased because of lower credit risk (risk of default of repayment) and liquidity or ability to sell in the secondary markets (conversion to cash when the banks are short on cash). It could be reasonably expected that Islamic banks would provide finance to customers at levels similar to conventional banks. The ratio results of net loans or financing (referred to as ‘loans’ in the tables) to total assets show that Islamic banks have higher levels of financing provided in all years. The other measurement of loan or financing levels is net loans or financing to customers and short-term funding; Islamic banks obtained higher results in all years, but the level fluctuated from 66 per cent to 111 per cent. The conventional banks had a much more stable loan portfolio at about 55 per cent of customer and short-term funding or 42 per cent of total assets. Perhaps this highlights more consistent management practices of conventional banks which may stem from the fact that conventional banks have been in existence for a longer period and have more competition than Islamic banks. Islamic banks had a much more consistent result for net financing to total assets, at around 51 per cent for all years. Islamic banks therefore provided financing at a rate about 9 per cent higher than conventional banks when compared to total assets. Part of this could be due to equity financing where Islamic banks take a position in the project as a joint partner or perhaps in the purchase and resale types of transactions. If the Islamic banks had higher risk equity, this would be expected to be offset by lower risk assets, such as low-risk loans or government securities. Perhaps purchase and resale funding is considered sufficiently low-risk to lend out at higher levels. This will be examined later. Conventional banks are seen to have the advantage of being able to pool funds and lend out monies to the most productive users of funds. Without an effective banking system some money may be hoarded in a household for instance, which is then not invested for the good of the economy. Hence banks are able to assist in economic output and growth by collecting funds and then financing suitable projects. To gain the most potential economic output, however, banks must be working efficiently. A traditional ratio measurement of efficiency for banks is cost to income. Hence the emphasis is on minimizing costs to maximize efficiency. Although this is a reasonable assumption, it must also be noted that a more profit-efficient bank may incur higher costs to look after their high-end customers, but meanwhile make a higher margin. From 2001 to 2003, Islamic banks had higher cost to income ratios, at around 70 per cent, but still in line with worldwide conventional bank average figures. Given the different arrangements with Islamic finance which often require
Slide 120: 102 Handbook of Islamic banking more ‘work’ on the part of the bank, such as with purchase-and-resale or mark-up transactions, it would be expected that Islamic banks incur higher costs as compared to conventional banks. When Islamic banks take equity investments in a new project it is reasonable to consider that costs in the initial years would be high. With time, however, the expected return would hopefully be higher and associated costs lower. Conventional banks obtained a measure around 55–60 per cent, which is considered quite low. Nevertheless, many of the countries used in our sample are from the Middle East region and that region is noted for the lowest cost efficiency levels worldwide (Brown and Skully, 2004). For most financial institutions, the ultimate aim is to maximize shareholder wealth. Islamic banks have a broader covenant, and they may be willing to sacrifice profitability for utilitarian aspects of social lending. Nevertheless, the continued financial health and existence of a bank requires that the capital be maintained. Equity investors will also be concerned that returns are adequate to cover the risks they are taking in their investment in the bank. In this case profitability is measured by return on average equity and return on average assets. Interestingly, for both profitability measures the Islamic banks outperformed conventional banks, although note that the results were calculated on specific country data only and not on a worldwide basis. Equity levels are much smaller than total assets because on the source of funds side of a bank’s balance sheet there is also the debt. Hence profitability figures will always be higher in relation to equity than to total assets. Next, the specific country data are examined. These are set out in the Appendix to this chapter for 11 countries: Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Turkey and Yemen. It must be noted that banks in the different countries operate under different conditions. Although both the conventional and Islamic banks within a particular country will have similar economic, social and financial conditions, they may work within different banking regulations. The very nature of Islamic banking, with purchase and resale and profit-sharing contracts, is different from lending in conventional banks. Hence the applicable regulation in regard to Islamic banks may be different. Some Islamic banks have previously been able to operate outside the conventional bank regulatory boundaries. Bank regulations exist to minimize the risk of financial failure of banks within an economy and the costs to society that this might entail. Regulators typically require banks to hold capital to protect depositors from these costs. Under Basel I, an international banking standard set by G10 countries, banks are required to hold at least 4 per cent Tier 1 capital and some Tier 2 capital which must add to 8 per cent capital requirement as a minimum. Regulators typically prefer banks to hold higher levels of capital to minimize risks. Bank management, however, prefer to maximize returns. Investing in liquid or short-term assets offers lower returns. Hence they prefer to minimize capital held, although they will not want the bank to fail either. Note that an Islamic bank version of Basel I was not developed and meanwhile the Islamic Financial Services Industry (IFSI) is examining the ramifications of Basel II for Islamic banks. Although the specific regulatory capital held is not reported here, we do have proxies via the structure ratios. Generally the Islamic banks hold higher levels of equity or capital than conventional banks. Notable exceptions are Egypt and Qatar. Islamic banks in Egypt did not even seem to hold capital equivalent to the minimum regulatory level under Basel I of 8 per cent. Their capital levels were about 5.3 per cent in relation to total assets. Thus Egyptian Islamic banks would seem to be operating in a much more risky manner
Slide 121: Operational efficiency and performance 103 compared to other Islamic and conventional banks. Similarly, in Qatar, the Islamic banks operate with higher capital risk. Capital risk is the risk that the bank will not have enough capital to absorb losses. Results to 2002 were around 7.5 per cent for the Islamic banks, but seemingly much improved by 2003, at 9.82 per cent for equity to total assets. At the other extreme, Islamic banks from Bahrain had seemingly the least capital risk, with results ranging from around 27 per cent to 50 per cent for equity to total assets. This may be because some banks treat investment accounts as off-balance sheet funds under management. However the conventional banks in Bahrain also held higher levels of equity in comparison to peer conventional banks elsewhere. Cost efficiency measures were generally considered low and consistent for most countries. Results of the cost to income ratio were in the vicinity of 45–55 per cent. One exception was Turkey. Turkish banks have needed to cope with high inflation levels that could lead to higher costs. Conventional banks in Turkey had low net loans to customer and short-term funding owing to the fact that they often invested in the safer option of inflation-adjusted government bonds rather than risking lending to businesses which were also trying to cope with the high inflation. Islamic banks in Turkey, however, were able to maintain a much higher proportion of financing. Again this is directly related to the risks involved in lending. Lending to a sovereign government is considered less risky than lending to corporations or individuals. In the years 2002 and 2003, the conventional banks made a correspondingly higher return whereas the Islamic banks in Turkey had much lower results. Hence Islamic banks in Turkey seemingly were able to maintain customer lending in an ethical manner, whilst the conventional banks minimized their risks and lent predominantly to the government. Liquidity results, however, were very different. These results should also be considered in the light of profitability results. Banks with lower liquidity could be expected to have invested in more long-term higher earning assets. Therefore, if low liquidity results were reported, it would be expected that a corresponding higher level of profit would also arise: that is, higher return from taking on higher risk levels. Alternatively, if these banks did not have a correspondingly high profit figure, it could be suggested that they perhaps had to pay higher costs to get adequate liquidity, as was required. Hence you would then expect that the cost to income ratio would be higher. Banks in Qatar and (sometimes) Bahrain generally held low levels of liquidity. The profitability levels were still considered excellent for Return on Equity (ROE) for both countries, but Bahrain reported higher profit levels for Return on Asset (ROA). For the measure net financing (‘loans’) to total assets, the results for both types of banks were around 40–55 per cent, with Islamic banks usually having higher levels. However, for net financing to customer and short-term funding, the results for the Islamic banks in Bahrain were often above 100 per cent. This means that Islamic banks in Bahrain were also outlaying funds not always categorized as financing to customers. Future research could examine this point. The most profitable banks at a consistent level were located in Iran, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Islamic banks often recorded higher profitability levels in these countries. Efficiency studies of Islamic banking Efficiency is an important factor for banks to remain competitive. Islamic banks are no exception, with increased competition from conventional banks, despite often only having
Slide 122: 104 Handbook of Islamic banking a few Islamic banks within any one country. In addition, the Basel capital regulations intend to foster global competition and therefore bank management and regulators should look to place their performance in an international context. Bank efficiency can be defined as the relative performance of a bank given its inputs or outputs to other banks with the same input or output limitations. In its basic output context, ‘efficiency’ measures the given output from a firm using a given input of resources. More efficient firms will produce more output from a given set of inputs. An efficient bank will score 1 (or 100 per cent). The other banks in the sample are compared relative to the best bank and will often have an efficiency score of less than 1. Under the ratio analysis as used earlier, there was no single best measurement of performance. Using linear programming techniques, however, multiple ‘inputs’ and ‘outputs’ into the intermediation process can be interpreted to give a single-figure result. Given that banks or financial institutions have a number of variables that input into their ‘intermediation’ process and a number of outputs that use linear models such as the nonparametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) for small data sets, or, for larger data sets, a parametric model such as Stochastic Frontier Analysis, were able to be used (SFA). Caution needs to be taken when comparing results. As a new sample is taken to study, a new ‘frontier’ of best practice banks then exists. Hence the most efficient bank in one sample may not replicate that result for that bank in a different sample. Further research into Islamic bank performance has been necessary to aid in the analysis of such institutions (Zaher and Hassan, 2001). Country borders no longer hinder the measurement of the performance of banks. Efficiency studies for conventional banks began in America. Further data sets then expanded to include the European region, given increased competition due to the Second Banking Directive within the European Union (EU). Since then, developing countries’ banks have been examined (Brown and Skully, 2004). Latest developments in efficiency research include the use of variations on the standard statistical techniques. Empirical measurement of the performance of Islamic banks began slowly, owing to a lack of data. Initial studies examined individual banks. Given the corresponding growth in performance studies of conventional banks and the expansion of Islamic banks, it was only a matter of time before Islamic banks would be more thoroughly investigated. Hassan (2003a) reported that the Islamic banks were relatively less efficient than conventional banks elsewhere. Efficiency results produced from both parametric and nonparametric methods were highly correlated with ROE and ROA, suggesting that ratio analysis was also suitable for performance measurement. Cost efficiencies for Sudan, Pakistan and Iran averaged 52 per cent, whilst profit efficiency was 34 per cent. Allocative efficiency which measures how well management resources are applied to the intermediation process was 79 per cent, whereas technical efficiency, or how well technology is applied to the intermediation process, was much lower, at 66 per cent. Hence Islamic banks in these economies could readily improve their efficiency by better use of technology. Efficiency for Islamic banks has generally improved with the expansion of business rather than improvement in the use of inputs and outputs into or out of the production process. As might be expected, larger banks and more profitable banks were generally also more efficient. Specific environmental differences for each country were included in a cost-efficiency study of Islamic banks by Brown and Skully (2004). Sudanese banks had the lowest cost
Slide 123: Operational efficiency and performance 105 efficiency, as could be expected owing to agricultural financing rather than cost-plus for retail expenditures-type transactions; however they had a higher compensating net interest margin. At a regional level, Middle Eastern banks were the most cost-efficient, followed by Asian and then African Islamic banks. Hassan and Hussein (2003) examined Sudanese banks alone (note that the Sudanese financial system is Islamic in nature). The decline in efficiency was attributed to poorer use of technology and not operating at a sufficient size or scale to be optimally efficient in the presence of scale economies (see Davis and Lewis, 1982; Lewis and Davis, 1987, ch. 7, for an analysis of scale economies in banking). The profitability of Islamic banks is positively influenced by high capital and loan-toasset ratios, favourable macroeconomic conditions, and negatively to taxes (Hassan and Bashir, 2005). Larger banking markets, and hence increased competition, negatively affected interest income, but was of no effect on non-interest income. Using a panel of Islamic banks from 22 countries, and using multiple efficiency techniques including parametric and non-parametric methods, Hassan (2005) found that the average cost efficiency was 74 per cent, whilst the average profit efficiency was 84 per cent. This suggests that these Islamic banks could improve efficiency most via cutting costs. Further analysis of allocative efficiency suggested that inefficiency was due to the way resources were allocated rather than to the use of technology. Reasons suggested for such results were that Islamic banks often face regulation not conducive to Islamic transactions in most countries. This of course will then have a negative effect on efficiency. As with Hassan (2003a), banks of a larger size and profitability were generally more efficient, suggesting economies of scale (size of bank). Foreign bank entry and Islamic banking A source of competition for Islamic banks is the possibility of local entry of Islamic banks from other countries. Foreign bank entry provides the impetus for improved efficiency performance of domestic Islamic banks. An example of an Islamic bank foreign entry is Qatar Islamic Bank, which entered the Malaysian Islamic market in 2006. The new bank will be called the Asian Finance Bank, which will also service clients from Brunei and Indonesia. Also in Bangladesh, Shamil Bank of Bahrain E.C. operates as a foreign Islamic bank. Why do banks move overseas? It is often to follow their market, that is, clients, or to expand their business (Lewis and Davis, 1987, ch. 8; Williams, 1997). Further advantages beyond efficiency improvements for allowing the entry of foreign banks include the expansion of products or services in the market, perhaps improved technology and improved training for staff. A disadvantage cited is that the home regulator can be appearing to lose power over the market, depending on the foreign bank entry mode (local joint venture, wholly owned subsidiary or branch office and so on). In view of the lack of literature on Islamic foreign bank entry, a study of the Middle Eastern region is instructive. Analysing both domestic and foreign commercial banks in the Middle Eastern region, Hassan (2004) found evidence that foreign banks had higher margins, non-interest income and profits. This was deemed due to better quality management and operations. As the per capita GDP increased, however, net interest margins and ROE declined, perhaps because of the sophistication and availability of finance: as GDP per capita increased, it would be expected that further financial services would be
Slide 124: 106 Handbook of Islamic banking offered and hence increased competition. Taxation appeared not to be a determining factor alone as to which markets banks entered. Customer and short-term funding levels appeared to be higher for foreign banks, perhaps indicating their preference for loan investments. An issue Islamic banks face when trying to enter other countries is that of regulation. Except for Malaysia, the Islamic banking regulations are often different from those of conventional banks. Hence regulations can be a limiting factor if they are not conducive to Islamic beliefs (Ahmad and Hassan, 2005). Market risk measurements and regulation in Islamic banking Market risk is defined as the potential for losses due to changes in the market prices. This could occur in the bank trading book or it may relate to commodity prices or foreign exchanges’ rate changes that can have a negative impact on the bank (either on- or offbalance sheet). The initial Basel regulations in 1988 predominantly were intended to avoid credit risk. Amendments in 1998, however, required a capital charge for market risk. Two methods of measuring market risk for a bank are via value at risk (VaR) and stress testing. Stress testing is used to measure possible outcomes under extreme market conditions. Risk testing under normal market conditions is tested via VaR. VaR measures the worst possible loss that a bank could make over a given period under normal trading conditions at a given confidence level, for example 95 per cent or 99 per cent. There are a number of different VaR methods that may vary, depending on assumptions of the portfolio returns and ease of implementation, including expected time required to implement. Hassan (2003b) notes that Islamic banks’ liabilities or debt differs from conventional banks’ balance sheet debt. There are non-investment deposits where the risk-averse depositor may have their funds invested. There are also unrestricted profit-sharing investment deposits (UPLSID) and restricted profit-sharing investment deposits (RPLSID). Islamic banks share the profits or losses with UPLSID but they only play an administrative role under RPLSID. Hence Islamic banks can play two roles either as a fiduciary arrangement for risk-averse depositors or as an agency for risk-taking investors. The Accounting and Audit Organization for Islamic Banks (AAOIFI) has argued that, on the liability side of an Islamic bank’s balance sheet, there should be an account called a Profit-Sharing Investment Account (PSIA) that should be capable of being included in capital calculations because of risk-absorbing capabilities. Hassan (2003b) suggests that regulatory capital charged for risk-adverse depositors needs to be separate and distinct from capital allocation from UPLSID where the bank takes on an equity stake in the investment. Currently most Islamic banks have mainly short-term investments not of an equity-type investment. After applying a number of different VaR models to various Islamic banks, the highest VaR estimates were obtained using the Non-affine Stochastic Volatility JumpDiffusion (NASVJ) method. In the banking arena at present the most pressing issue is the theoretical and operational aspect of implementing Basel II capital regulation. Fundamentally, the question is whether Islamic banks need to be regulated if they operate with equity capital and investment deposits as their source of funds. Since depositors share profits and losses with the bank, they can be considered to be in effect quasi-shareholders (Hassan and Chowdhury, 2004). Profit and loss-sharing investments could be considered as part of Tier 2 capital under Basel I. The problem, however, is that they are not permanent in
Slide 125: Operational efficiency and performance 107 nature and so remain risky because of liquidity concerns. Hence profit/loss-sharing investments need to be included in capital risk calculations, but perhaps as a lower risk category (Hassan and Dicle, 2005). With the implementation of Basel II, it is expected that most Islamic banks will opt for the Standardized Approach to risk assessment. However, the impetus will be provided for improved internal risk measurement techniques, and actual reporting, when banks are able to hold lower levels of capital, hence leading to lower costs. Basel II needs to be implemented by Islamic banks, even if not required by their bank regulator, to provide confidence in operations and capability to borrow from non-conventional streams for liquidity/funding purposes. Islamic banks have higher levels of demand deposits, and undertake profit/loss sharing in projects via mudaraba and musharaka, which leads to the possibility that they perhaps require higher capital levels to compensate. Hassan and Choudhury (2004) suggest that capital requirements for demand deposits and investment deposits be applied differently than for conventional banks. One option is to put demand deposits on the balance sheet in the banking book and report investment deposits off balance sheet via the trading book. This, it would seem, is the practice of the Faisal Islamic Bank Bahrain (Lewis and Algaoud, 2001, ch. 7). A second option is to ‘pool’ investments and run them via a subsidiary of the bank and hence apply separate capital standards. The AAOIFI supports the notion that investment deposits be reported on balance sheet rather than off balance sheet. This discrepancy between Islamic banks has made analytical comparisons of performance limited to those banks that comply with transparency. Problems and prospects of Islamic banking A number of aspects add to the dilemma of Islamic banks (Ahmad and Hassan, 2005). First, many people do not understand Islamic banking; this includes both Muslims and non-Muslims. The fact that shari’a boards, which oversee the transactions in relation to the Qur’an, are often at the individual bank level, can lead to many interpretations of what is and what is not a suitable ‘Islamic’ transaction. Also the nomenclature is often not consistent. Islamic bankers have often modified the Islamic transaction to suit the requirements of the current transaction. Islamic investments are not always palatable to investors, but this may be related to their limited knowledge of Islamic finance. Second, although Islamic banking was able to develop rapidly in the Middle East oil-rich countries in the 1980s, many people, companies and governments in that region still use only conventional banks. Third, it is difficult for Islamic banks to manage liquidity risk with Islamic products where interest-free capital markets do not exist. This is also related to the shortage of Islamic investment instruments. Next there is a conflict of interest within Islamic banks to balance achievement of a high ROE, but also to meet customers’ needs in an Islamic and ‘social’ manner by perhaps providing qard hasan in a low-value contract, which may not lead to maximizing ROE. In addition, the social aspect of Islamic banking such as making zakat donations to charities is seen as an important aspect to maintain. Other problems include a lack of suitable trained staff able to perform adequate credit analysis on projects, as well as suitable managers, rather than just the owner. Latest technologies as used in conventional banks are often not used by Islamic banks. Under conventional banking systems, risk is priced according to interest rates, whereas Islamic
Slide 126: 108 Handbook of Islamic banking finance often requires a mark-up or profit-sharing amount to be determined before the transaction begins. Often Islamic banks do not fall under the lender of last resort facility, where the central bank can lend money to the bank in times of low liquidity, except in Malaysia. Another point at issue is regulation. Islamic banks came into existence when conventional banks, which charged interest, were well established. Some regulations need to be amended before an Islamic bank can operate within a particular economy, an example being stamp duties. The Islamic bank will purchase a product on behalf of a client and then resell it. Double stamp duties should not be charged in such circumstances. In the non-Muslim world, new banks also need to meet economic requirements such as a certain size requirement and may be limited as regards areas of the economy in which they can operate. Sudanese Islamic banks, for instance, are so restricted. Islamic banks are in a privileged position to gain access to customers from large Muslim populations around the world, thanks to the philosophy of the Qur’an. However, they also have a social obligation to finance via equity, or profit or loss mode, projects that may initially lack capital funds. This could also see the emergence of countries with large Muslim populations financially expanding at a more rapid rate. Perhaps then the social equity of an Islamic bank is best supported through finding a good project that does not have sufficient equity or capital for a conventional bank to lend to. Table 7.3 examines some broad statistics for individual Islamic banks. Data are examined at bank level, given that many Islamic banks do not report specific details. In most instances, Islamic operational assets are over half the total assets. In Kuwait the International Investor Company reports very low levels. The two Sudanese Islamic banks have low levels of Islamic assets; however, to their credit, they have the highest percentage of equity investments, at over 20 per cent of their total assets. More profit and loss-sharing lending, such as mudaraba and musharaka, should ethically be undertaken by more Islamic banks that could include further investments with people with new ideas but limited capital. Conclusions A major aim of this chapter was to compare the performance of Islamic banks with conventional banks. Two fundamental differences between these two forms of banking are related to financing techniques with or without interest usage and social objectives. Islamic banks typically held higher levels of equity and it was initially suggested that this might be due to equity investments such as with mudaraba and musharaka transactions. Further analysis, however, showed that only Sudanese banks had significant levels of equity investments. Given the attention Islamic bank equity investments receive, one might have expected Islamic banks to be a major source of long-term capital for their clients. This was not the case. Islamic banks also seemingly lent out to customers at a higher level to total assets than conventional banks. This again could be related to social aspects. More recent periods show the cost efficiency of Islamic banks to be higher than local conventional banks but similar to conventional banks elsewhere. It would be expected for the additional labour required to perform Islamic transactions to lead to higher costs. Islamic financing has instead tended to be short-term in nature. For the future, obviously the development of new Islamic products and services is imperative. The most profitable banks were found in Iran, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, with Islamic banks often achieving higher levels than conventional banks. Prior efficiency studies found that Islamic banks
Slide 127: Operational efficiency and performance 109 Table 7.3 Financial results of Islamic banks (2004) Income from Islamic transactions/ total assets 6.4 n.a. 2.5 0.3 2.7 2.7 3.5 5.4 2.4 0.1 3.9 n.a. 2.7 3.8 4.4 n.a. n.a. 1.4 3.4 3.8 0.2 Country Bahrain Bahrain Bahrain Bahrain Bahrain Bahrain Egypt Iran Jordan Kuwait Kuwait Malaysia Pakistan Qatar Qatar Russia Sudan Sudan UAE UAE UAE Bank Al Amin Bank Arcapita Bank BSC Bahrain Islamic Bank Gulf Finance House Kuwait Finance House (BHD) Shamil Bank of Bahrain Faisal Islamic Bank of Egypt Bank Sepah Jordan Islamic Bank for Finance and Investment International Investor Company Kuwait Finance House (Kuwait) Bank Islam Meezan Bank Limited Qatar International Islamic Bank Qatar Islamic Bank Badr Forte Bank Sudanese Islamic Bank Tadamon Islamic Bank Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank Dubai Islamic Bank plc Emirates Islamic Bank Islamic operations/ total assets 65.2 23.9 66.4 n.a. 53.4 24.5 79.8 59.6 48.4 9.9 46.5 60.9 62.6 53.6 57.8 33.7 12.8 17.4 61.4 59.5 79.5 Equity investments/ total assets n.a. 22.9 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. 14.7 n.a. 0.2 1.2 n.a. 0.6* 7.3 7.1 n.a. 0.0 n.a. 28.3 6.0 1.1 n.a. Total assets $US millions 270.6 1 228.3 677.7 501.6 466.40 1 613.7 2 546.90 13 913.50 1 591.8 279.60 11 734.30 3 410.1 333.2 1 363.3 2 111.8 26.20 100.40 173.30 3 454.60 8 335.80 628.7 Note: Islamic operations include all types of Islamic investments; * based on mudahraba (profit sharing) and musyaraka (profit and loss sharing). Source: Bankscope database. often achieved efficiency through expanding their markets and that a larger scale or size and higher levels of capital were desirable. Efficiency levels could most readily be improved if Islamic banks took more care with input costs. Banks were generally profitefficient. Meanwhile regulators around the world have a better understanding of specific Islamic requirements, but further change will be required to accommodate Islamic banks. Improved risk assessment techniques should be implemented, including VaR for market risk measurements. Consumers and investors need further education in Islamic finance. Ahmad and Hassan (2005) suggest that Islamic banks need to ensure high-quality services for customers. For banks to operate efficiently, and hence help economic growth of an economy, banks need to be trusted by both the general public and regulators alike. As
Slide 128: 110 Handbook of Islamic banking stated initially, Islamic banks are now competing with conventional banks offering Islamic windows or services. It is important for Islamic banks to develop common reporting standards, or harmonization, as promulgated by Basel II, the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institution (AAOIFI) and the Islamic Financial Services Industry (IFSI). This could include following International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and employing International Accounting Standards (IAS). With continued globalization of financial services, the outlook is for continued growth of Islamic banks. However, compliance with Basel II, and resultant effective market discipline, will be a mitigating factor, owing to special problems of investment accounts and the role of depositors, explored further later in this volume. References Ahmad, A.U.F. and M.K. Hassan (2007), ‘Regulation and performance of Islamic banking in Bangladesh’, Thunderbird International Business Review (forthcoming). Brown, K. (2003), ‘Islamic banking comparative analysis’, Arab Bank Review, 5 (2), 43–50. Brown, K. and M. Skully (2004), ‘Islamic banks: a cross-country study of cost efficiency performance’, Accounting, Commerce and Finance: The Islamic Perspective Journal, 8 (1 & 2), 43–79. Davis, K.T. and M.K. Lewis (1982), ‘Economies of scale in financial institutions’, Technical Paper 24, in Australian Financial System Inquiry, Commissioned Studies and Selected Papers, part 1, Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, pp. 645–701. Hasan, Z. (2004), ‘Measuring the efficiency of Islamic banks: criteria, methods and social priorities’, Review of Islamic Economics, 8 (2), 5–30. Hassan, M. Kabir (1999), ‘Islamic banking in theory and practice: the experience of Bangladesh’, Managerial Finance, 25 (5), 60–113. Hassan M.K. (2003a), ‘Cost, profit and X-efficiency of Islamic banks in Pakistan, Iran and Sudan’, International Seminar on Islamic Banking: ‘Risk Management, Regulation and Supervision’, 30 September–2 October, Jakarta, Indonesia. Hassan, M.K. (2003b), ‘VaR analysis of Islamic banks’, paper presented in an International Conference on Islamic Banking: ‘Risk Management, Regulation and Supervision, Towards an International Regulatory Convergence’, 30 September–2 October, Jakarta, Indonesia. Hassan, M.K. (2004), ‘Financial liberalization and foreign bank entry on Islamic banking performance’, working paper (mimeo), University of New Orleans. Hassan, M.K. (2005), ‘The X-efficiency of Islamic banks’, paper presented at the 12th ERF Conference in Cairo, 19–21 August, Cairo, Egypt. Hassan, M.K. and A.H. Bashir (2005), ‘Determinants of Islamic banking profitability’, in Munawar Iqbal and Rodney Wilson (eds), Islamic Perspectives on Wealth Creation, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Hassan, M.K. and Mannan Choudhury (2004), ‘Islamic banking regulations in light of Basel II’, paper presented at the Sixth Harvard University Forum in Islamic Finance, 8 May, Cambridge, Mass. Hassan, M.K. and Mehmet Dicle (2005), ‘Basel II and capital requirements of Islamic banks’, paper presented at the Sixth International Conference of Islamic Banking and Finance, 21–24 November, Jakarta, Indonesia. Hassan, M.K. and K.A. Hussein (2003), ‘Static and dynamic efficiency in the Sudanese banking system’, Review of Islamic Economics, 14, 5–48. Lewis, M.K. (1988), ‘Off balance sheet activities and financial innovation in banking’, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Quarterly Review, 167, 387–410. Lewis, M.K. (1992), ‘Off-the-balance-sheet activities’, in P. Newman, M. Milgate and J. Eatwell (eds), New Palgrave Dictionary of Money and Finance, vol 3, London: Macmillan, pp. 67–72. Lewis, M.K. and L.M. Algaoud (2001), Islamic Banking, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar. Lewis, M.K. and K.T. Davis (1987), Domestic and International Banking, Oxford: Philip Allan. Sarker, Abdul Awwal and M. Kabir Hassan (2005), ‘Islamic banking in Bangladesh: background, methodology and present status’, working paper, Bangladesh Bank, Dhaka, Bangladesh, December. State Bank of Pakistan (2005), Quarterly performance review of the state banking system, State Bank of Pakistan, 22–24 March. Williams, B. (1997), ‘Positive theories of multinational banking: eclectic theory versus internalisation theory’, Journal of Economic Surveys, 11 (1), 71–100. Zaher, Tarek and M. Kabir Hassan (2001), ‘A comparative literature survey of Islamic finance and banking’, Financial Markets, Institutions and Instruments, 10 (4), 155–99.
Slide 129: Operational efficiency and performance 111 Appendix Country-specific performance results 2003 Bahrain Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Egypt Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Iran* Islamic Capital funds/liabilities Equity/total assets Cost to income ratio Liquid assets/cust. and ST funding Net ‘loans’/total assets 39.59 20.31 26.77 14.40 47.26 42.03 8.68 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 72.69 173.35 127.35 69.99 32.98 32.43 47.93 47.44 50.12 20.23 17.98 17.19 53.05 45.06 52.10 50.75 47.51 49.04 14.72 129.35 44.58 84.18 121.81 21.07 16.40 43.17 39.35 15.11 13.59 58.98 58.30 52.67 45.34 19.17 17.75 15.99 59.13 38.26 Net ‘loans’/cust. and ST funding 106.39 48.42 Return on average equity 16.66 14.09 Return on average assets 5.52 2.15 Capital funds/liabilities Equity/total assets Cost to income ratio Liquid assets/cust. and ST funding Net ‘loans’/total assets Net ‘loans’/cust. and ST funding Return on average equity Return on average assets 18.88 81.67 74.54 27.31 28.67 48.00 56.94 57.24 48.16 57.83 41.85 43.67 49.91 50.18 48.24 82.56 212.35 145.94 111.41 225.51 51.55 53.98 60.38 64.09 58.94 12.11 12.72 11.46 5.50 5.20 7.50 13.23 12.87 9.43 9.79 6.32 7.78 7.35 2.58 2.42 2.27 3.08 3.01 1.12 1.27 5.85 11.41 5.50 9.70 42.58 47.90 10.56 18.26 41.74 52.52 45.97 62.76 9.98 11.50 0.56 1.14 20.31 14.08 60.39 48.90 5.75 12.58 5.39 10.62 49.40 43.81 11.02 17.31 41.49 55.62 46.54 67.59 7.83 15.74 0.40 1.73 44.78 15.77 62.86 49.21 6.12 12.62 5.75 10.58 40.72 43.10 9.34 20.45 42.92 54.16 48.31 65.81 13.71 16.30 0.87 1.67 17.89 10.75 67.04 56.17 — 4.97 5.44 9.12 10.43 11.00 — 4.72 5.13 8.20 9.00 9.46 — 57.41 49.04 50.36 59.68 49.03 — 8.38 9.36 20.86 — 39.42 — 45.31 — 11.66 — 1.16 — — — — 19.42 40.84 48.71 43.91 57.98 2.41 5.01 0.08 0.53 18.45 13.75 50.02 44.58 19.46 41.63 51.26 45.26 62.14 9.34 8.59 0.47 0.77 78.21 20.41 58.36 66.06 Capital funds / liabilities Equity / total assets Cost to income ratio Liquid assets / cust. and ST funding
Slide 130: 112 Handbook of Islamic banking 2003 Net ‘loans’ / total assets Net ‘loans’ / cust. and ST funding Return on average equity Return on average assets Jordan Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Lebanon Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Oman Islamic Conventional Islamic Capital funds / liabilities Equity / total assets Cost to income ratio Liquid assets / cust. and ST funding Net ‘loans’ / total assets Net ‘loans’ / cust. and ST funding Return on average equity Return on average assets — — — — — 10.72 — 9.62 — 55.69 — 40.81 — 36.95 — 43.92 — 9.79 — 1.00 — 8.02 — 6.83 — 55.44 — 80.25 — 21.91 — 24.81 — 13.38 — 0.93 — 14.86 — 2002 51.31 72.83 22.02 3.40 12.35 10.28 10.80 9.04 55.00 53.92 52.90 44.92 35.61 37.77 40.15 47.04 3.89 8.81 0.63 0.94 — 10.25 — 8.54 — 65.84 — 71.37 — 26.06 — 29.54 — 1.21 — 0.55 — 14.39 — 2001 52.61 96.15 20.65 2.52 14.00 9.70 11.86 8.63 60.99 53.22 50.04 46.11 32.21 41.57 37.86 54.95 4.24 8.15 0.71 0.86 — 11.26 — 9.41 — 71.96 — 69.76 — 28.60 — 32.71 — 6.69 — 0.51 — 16.13 — 2000 53.70 91.18 23.91 2.28 18.13 9.36 14.53 8.29 53.69 58.90 50.07 47.28 31.24 41.50 37.37 52.59 5.65 8.48 0.89 0.76 1999 1998 52.91 47.77 91.44 104.80 20.04 11.15 1.29 0.40 15.79 9.01 13.19 7.60 61.69 61.01 35.84 52.58 31.04 44.20 36.16 55.94 3.56 4.33 0.55 0.41 24.88 9.92 18.39 8.12 67.72 61.19 41.03 48.53 32.97 46.44 39.82 59.12 3.89 8.84 0.43 0.74 Capital funds / liabilities Equity / total assets Cost to income ratio Liquid assets / cust. and ST funding Net ‘loans’ / total assets Net ‘loans’ / cust. and ST funding Return on average equity Return on average assets 11.38 82.56 101.72 12.51 13.71 16.85 10.22 36.42 40.11 10.33 11.00 12.53 44.89 60.65 64.54 77.23 85.29 69.01 69.27 119.86 114.03 72.73 38.84 30.02 46.50 71.27 20.68 32.27 27.09 75.60 25.19 31.10 35.61 38.48 11.62 9.26 2.21 2.41 — 35.46 — 35.17 38.31 22.56 7.74 5.54 7.69 2.54 2.51 0.61 0.63 — 30.49 — — 48.48 — Capital funds / liabilities Equity / total assets
Slide 131: Operational efficiency and performance 113 2003 Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Qatar Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Saudi Arabia Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Cost to income ratio Liquid assets / cust. and ST funding Net ‘loans’ / total assets Net ‘loans’ / cust. and ST funding Return on average equity Return on average assets 11.47 — 47.84 — — — 69.83 — 85.74 — 5.03 — 0.50 10.88 14.00 9.82 12.27 30.96 33.19 15.89 — 68.00 56.78 79.84 69.78 34.74 21.68 3.21 2.62 12.62 10.48 11.21 9.47 — 41.18 68.83 47.97 40.67 46.89 2002 11.32 — 44.65 — — — 72.56 — 87.96 — 15.71 — 1.81 8.08 13.24 7.46 25.27 40.33 36.49 13.20 2001 12.80 — 48.50 — — — 75.24 — 2000 19.56 — 47.25 — — — 74.71 — 1999 23.00 — 47.83 — — — 73.34 — 1998 31.52 — 44.97 — — — 69.52 — 98.00 — 14.33 — 2.58 8.14 63.77 7.53 24.10 45.50 39.10 8.36 — 82.98 49.74 99.68 60.66 24.23 16.69 1.81 2.04 16.71 11.07 14.32 9.94 — 48.12 60.48 24.34 45.76 40.28 91.84 103.02 117.08 — — — 1.82 10.98 11.39 — — — 0.15 1.88 1.99 7.81 12.42 7.24 25.34 41.37 42.71 11.69 8.47 91.06 7.81 24.44 44.42 43.52 9.02 8.28 52.01 7.65 23.16 48.79 40.37 10.52 — 82.98 44.59 99.87 55.41 20.77 15.62 1.58 2.12 15.30 10.35 13.27 9.30 — 52.00 56.26 21.60 48.53 40.34 Capital funds / liabilities Equity / total assets Cost to income ratio Liquid assets / cust. and ST funding Net ‘loans’ / total assets Net ‘loans’ / cust. and ST funding Return on average equity Return on average assets — — — 82.22 84.28 86.04 46.77 45.87 41.87 95.74 101.21 105.13 95.13 26.89 19.46 1.99 2.49 13.01 11.13 11.51 9.97 — 44.32 72.51 55.08 36.47 41.73 62.79 22.47 11.76 1.69 1.86 14.93 10.89 12.99 9.76 — 44.05 62.38 38.85 41.97 39.54 58.14 17.78 0.33 1.38 0.77 15.35 10.33 13.31 9.29 — 46.88 70.84 26.29 37.61 38.92 Capital funds / liabilities Equity / total assets Cost to income ratio Liquid assets / cust. and ST funding Net ‘loans’ / total assets
Slide 132: 114 Handbook of Islamic banking 2003 Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Tunisia Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Turkey Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Net ‘loans’ / cust. and ST funding Return on average equity Return on average assets 52.70 54.33 28.94 22.70 3.29 2.14 — 11.34 — 10.09 — 63.22 — 12.41 — 74.48 — 2002 46.66 48.90 20.85 21.59 2.54 2.02 43.75 14.73 30.43 11.85 46.38 58.71 2.22 20.91 59.96 71.11 89.13 2001 53.45 45.91 22.79 22.02 2.99 1.94 48.27 16.44 32.55 12.63 39.73 55.31 3.29 33.01 54.05 63.73 89.18 82.79 5.27 11.75 1.70 1.29 2000 48.78 44.89 30.45 20.80 4.05 1.72 46.83 19.16 31.89 14.21 41.43 56.73 1.91 29.80 32.12 62.35 52.00 78.65 4.93 12.05 1.62 1.25 7.51 17.72 6.97 12.93 71.73 82.26 21.95 66.86 72.75 30.88 80.98 41.40 19.59 12.59 1.08 1.21 1999 62.01 46.31 26.96 0.17 3.71 0.48 51.40 29.21 33.95 17.68 45.07 55.74 2.17 54.64 43.10 63.03 71.18 1998 58.81 46.49 26.60 15.53 3.86 1.53 54.63 17.71 35.33 19.30 51.61 54.76 2.27 28.25 46.45 62.97 77.69 Capital funds / liabilities Equity / total assets Cost to income ratio Liquid assets / cust. and ST funding Net ‘loans’ / total assets Net ‘loans’ / cust. and ST funding Return on average equity Return on average assets 102.30 97.80 — 4.21 8.38 5.93 — 1.32 0.86 0.68 12.17 19.85 10.68 14.58 122.18 58.73 25.92 62.67 66.68 37.29 78.56 55.22 2.09 22.52 0.28 2.67 81.11 118.34 4.39 4.09 11.74 8.59 1.52 1.40 1.42 1.17 5.93 8.87 5.55 3.23 61.00 65.74 21.93 60.25 78.43 31.12 87.05 39.51 36.04 23.56 1.42 4.24 3.03 8.00 2.94 4.03 47.57 80.82 — 42.14 85.78 39.35 97.36 47.04 67.41 25.77 1.98 5.41 Capital funds / liabilities Equity / total assets Cost to income ratio Liquid assets / cust. and ST funding Net ‘loans’ / total assets Net ‘loans’ / cust. and ST funding Return on average equity Return on average assets 10.56 8.59 39.09 12.12 9.52 7.78 15.45 10.30 82.71 178.05 75.12 143.34 30.25 38.49 67.56 64.74 28.89 75.49 37.25 2.48 15.88 0.07 1.15 75.20 58.04 25.07 66.07 33.97 46.29 42.10 2.71 4.31
Slide 133: Operational efficiency and performance 115 2003 Yemen Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Islamic Conventional Capital funds / liabilities Equity / total assets Cost to income ratio Liquid assets / cust. and ST funding Net ‘loans’ / total assets Net ‘loans’ / cust. and ST funding Return on average equity Return on average assets 15.08 7.80 12.66 7.17 74.58 62.81 73.06 68.93 22.17 27.98 25.65 30.94 5.20 5.09 0.12 0.39 2002 17.63 10.45 13.89 8.96 80.64 59.69 61.51 71.44 27.97 27.37 31.58 31.33 10.24 5.18 0.22 0.41 2001 13.22 15.24 11.55 11.68 48.70 59.53 46.93 77.26 46.30 25.36 56.84 29.20 15.10 4.30 1.90 0.05 2000 14.90 8.52 12.95 7.81 46.99 49.75 43.27 70.48 54.09 25.92 65.51 28.82 14.28 3.37 1.84 0.28 1999 15.45 9.75 13.38 8.83 53.21 51.53 48.84 64.07 49.55 31.28 61.68 35.32 18.64 6.41 2.73 0.40 1998 19.96 9.44 16.60 8.39 51.02 55.17 52.64 66.72 49.58 34.78 66.06 39.73 14.44 9.67 2.60 0.44 * Iran has a full Islamic financial system, hence no conventional banks reported. Source: Bankscope database.
Slide 134: 8 Marketing of Islamic financial products Said M. Elfakhani, Imad J. Zbib and Zafar U. Ahmed Introduction Islamic financial products offer new opportunities for institutions to address previously unexplored consumer and business segments. Institutions offering Islamic financial services have increased in number and availability thanks to a growing demand by certain segments of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims for shari’a-compliant products. Currently, more than 265 Islamic banks and other financial institutions are operating across the world, from Jakarta (Indonesia) to Jeddah (Saudi Arabia), with total assets of more than $262 billion, as detailed in Tables 8.1 to 8.3. Table 8.1 lists some major Islamic banks in the Middle East. Table 8.2 ranks the largest Islamic banks in the Arab world. Table 8.3 lists the leading Islamic debt managers (2004–2005). Islamic banks aim at addressing the needs of new segments by creating a range of Islamically acceptable products, the development of which pose significant challenges arising from the need for shari’a compliance in addition to regulatory complexities. Marketing such products is another challenge in light of competition from conventional banks and the need for innovative products. Table 8.1 Country Algeria Bahrain Prominent Islamic banks in the Middle East Islamic financial institutions Banque Al Baraka D’Algérie (1991) ABC Islamic Bank (1995) Al Amin Co. for Securities and Investment Funds (1987) Albaraka Islamic Investment Bank (1984) Al Tawfeek Company for Investment Funds (1987) Arab Islamic Bank (1990) Bahrain Islamic Bank (1979) Bahrain Islamic Investment Co. (1981) Citi Islamic Investment Bank (1996) Faysal Investment Bank of Bahrain (1984) Faysal Islamic Bank of Bahrain (1982) First Islamic Investment Bank (1996) Gulf Finance House (1999) Islamic Investment Co. of the Gulf (1983) Islamic Leasing Company Alwatany Bank of Egypt, Cairo (1980) (one Islamic branch) Arab Investment Bank (Islamic Banking operations), Cairo Bank Misr (Islamic Branches), Cairo (window opened 1980) Egyptian Saudi Finance Bank (1980) Faisal Islamic Bank of Egypt, Cairo (1977) International Islamic Bank for Investment and Development, Cairo (1980) Islamic Investment and Development Company, Cairo (1983) Nasir Social Bank, Cairo (1971) Egypt 116
Slide 135: Marketing of Islamic financial products Table 8.1 Country Iraq Jordan 117 (continued) Islamic financial institutions Iraqi Islamic Bank for Investment and Development (1993) Beit El-Mal Saving and Investment Co. (1983) Islamic International Arab Bank (1998) Jordan Islamic Bank for Finance and Investment (1978) International Investment Group (1993) Kuwait Finance House, Safat (1977) The International Investor (1992) Al Baraka Bank Lebanon (1992) Arab Finance House (2004) Al Baraka Islamic Bank, Mauritania (1985) Al-Jazeera Investment Company, Doha (1989) Qatar International Islamic Bank (1990) Qatar Islamic Bank (SAQ) (1983) Al Baraka Investment and Development Company, Jeddah (1982) Al Rajihi Banking and Investment Corporation (1988) Islamic Development Bank, Jeddah (1975) Bank Al Tamwil Al Saudi Al Tunisi (1983) Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank (1977) Dubai Islamic Bank, Dubai (1975) Islamic Investment Company of the Gulf, Sharjah (1977) Saba Islamic Bank (1996) Tadhom Islamic Bank (1996) Yemen Islamic Bank for Finance and Investment (1996) Kuwait Lebanon Mauritania Qatar Saudi Arabia Tunisia UAE Yemen Note: date in brackets is the date of formation. Source: Lewis and Algaoud (2001). Contemporary environment The introduction of Islamic financial products across the world has been in response to the growing need of a significant segment of the marketplace that refused to deal with interest-based instruments. This development has helped finance the operations of small and medium enterprises that were unable to gain access to credit facilities owing to their lack of collateral and the small size of these loans, making costs higher. Conventional banks rely extensively on the creditworthiness of clients before granting a loan, while Islamic banks emphasize the projected cash flows of a project being funded, culminating in the emergence of various Islamic financial services as a significant contributor to the development of local economies and meeting consumers’ needs. In certain societies, conventional banks are viewed as depriving the society of economic balance and equity because the interest-based system is security-oriented rather than growth-oriented, thereby depriving resources to a large number of potential entrepreneurs who do not possess sufficient collateral to pledge with banks. There are many
Slide 136: 118 Handbook of Islamic banking Ranking of top Islamic banks in the Arab world Type of operation Islamic window Islamic window Islamic window Islamic bank Islamic window Islamic window Islamic window Islamic bank Islamic window Islamic window Islamic window Islamic bank Islamic bank Islamic bank Islamic bank Islamic bank Islamic bank N.A. Table 8.2 Bank National Commercial Bank (Jeddah, Saudi Arabia) Riyadh Bank (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia) Arab Banking Corporation (Manama, Bahrain) Al Rajihi Banking & Investment Corp. (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia) National Bank of Egypt (Cairo, Egypt) Saudi British Bank (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia) Gulf International Bank (Manama, Bahrain) Kuwait Finance House (Safat, Kuwait) Saudi International Bank (London, UK) Banque Du Caire (Cairo, Egypt) United Bank of Kuwait (London, UK) Dubai Islamic Bank (Dubai, UAE) Faisal Islamic Bank of Bahrain (Manama, Bahrain) Faisal Islamic Bank of Egypt (Cairo, Egypt) Jordan Islamic Bank for Finance and Investment (Amman, Jordan) Qatar Islamic Bank (Doha, Qatar) Al Baraka Islamic Investment Bank (Manama, Bahrain) Bank of Oman, Bahrain & Kuwait (Ruwi, Oman) Source: The Banker, November 1997. Table 8.3 Manager Top Islamic debt managers (July 2004–May 2005) Amt, US$ m. 866 753 582 551 433 427 350 285 279 263 4789 Iss. 28 3 4 19 2 9 1 3 27 3 99 Share (%) 15.00 13.05 10.08 9.54 7.5 7.39 6.06 4.94 4.84 4.56 82.96 HSBC Citigroup RHB Capital Bhd AmMerchant Bank Bhd Dubai Islamic Bank Commerce International Merchant Bankers Bhd UBS United Overseas Bank Ltd Aseambankers Malaysia Bhd Government bond/no bookrunner Total Source: Islamic Financial News (available in Executive Magazine, June 2005, Issue 72). individual consumers and entrepreneurs in Islamic societies who believe that the interestbased conventional banking system leads to a misallocation of resources. It is believed that conventional banks are more interested in the pledge of collateral and in securing interest payment regardless of the profitability of the project funded.
Slide 137: Marketing of Islamic financial products 119 Islamic banking is now a global phenomenon and is gaining regulatory approval to operate alongside conventional Western-style institutions. For example, the British regulatory body, the Financial Services Authority (FSA), has been playing a proactive role in promoting Islamic banking across the UK, leading to the establishment of the Islamic Bank of Britain. In order to respond to this expansion, Islamic bankers began developing new products to reach out to this broader client base. Among the innovations have been the development of fixed-return instruments such as Islamic bonds (sukuk) and the creation of the global Islamic money market. Corporate and sovereign sukuk issues totalled $6.7 billion in 2004, up from $1.9 billion in 2003. Funds generated within certain rich Muslim countries such as the six member Gulf Cooperation Council countries (consisting of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain) have motivated Western banks to establish Islamic subsidiaries (‘windows’) and cater for this new need. Banks such as Citibank, Chase Manhattan, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, ABN Amro, Société Générale, BNP Paribas, Bank of America, Standard Chartered and Barclays have been offering Islamic financial products through their subsidiaries to tap into this lucrative market. A subsidiary of Citigroup now operates what is effectively the world’s largest Islamic bank in terms of transactions. About $6 billion worth of Islamic financial products have been marketed by Citibank worldwide since 1996. Islamic financial products Islamic financial systems are based on five major tenets founded on the shari’a bans and commandments (Iqbal, 1997). They are the prohibition of riba, profit and loss sharing, the absence of gharar (speculation and gambling-like transactions), disallowing the derivation of money on money, and the avoidance of haram (forbidden) activities. These have been examined in earlier chapters. Financial instruments based on these principles have been developed to facilitate everyday banking activities by providing halal (shari’a-compliant) methods of lending or borrowing money and still offering some acceptable returns for investors. Listed below are some popular Islamic financial products being marketed worldwide by Islamic banks and financial institutions. Murabaha Murabaha (trade with mark-up cost) is one of the most widely used instruments for shortterm financing and accounts for nearly 75 per cent of Islamic financial products marketed worldwide. Referring to ‘cost-plus sale ’, murabaha is the sale of a commodity at a price that includes a set profit of which both the vendor (marketer) and the consumer are aware. Ijara Ijara (leasing) permits the client to purchase assets for subsequent leasing for a certain period of time and at a mutually agreed upon amount of rent, and represents approximately 10 per cent of Islamic financial products marketed worldwide. Mudaraba Mudaraba or trust financing is a contract conducted between two parties, a capital owner (rabb al-mal)and an investment manager (mudarib), and is similar to an investment fund.
Slide 138: 120 Handbook of Islamic banking The rabb al-mal (beneficial owner or sleeping partner) lends money to the mudarib (managing trustee or labour partner), who then has to return the money to the rabb al-mal in the form of principal with profits shared in a pre-agreed ratio. Musharaka Musharaka literally means sharing derived from shirkah. Shirkat-ul-milk means a joint ownership of two or more persons of a particular property through inheritance or joint purchase, and shirkat-ul-aqd means a partnership established through a contract. Musharaka is basically a joint contract by which all the partners share the profit or loss of the joint venture, which resembles mudaraba, except that the provider of capital or financier takes equity stakes in the venture along with the entrepreneur. Muqarada Muqarada (bonds) allows a bank to issue Islamic bonds to finance a specific project. Investors who buy muqarada bonds take a share of the profits generated by the project as well as assuming the risks of losses. Salam Salam literally means ‘futures’. A buyer pays in advance for a designated quantity and quality of a certain commodity to be delivered at a certain agreed date and price. It is limited to fungible commodities and is mostly used for the purpose of agricultural products by providing needed capital prior to delivery. Generally, Islamic banks use a salam contract to buy a commodity and pay the supplier in advance for it, specifying the chosen date for delivery. The bank then sells this commodity to a third party on a salam or instalment basis. With two salam contracts, the second should entail delivery of the same quantity and description as the first contract and is concluded after the first contract (El-Gamal, 2000). Istisnaa Istisnaa is a contract in which a party (for example a consumer) demands the production of a commodity according to certain specifications and then the delivery of it from another party, with payment dates and price specified in the contract. The contract can be cancelled at any time by any party given a prior notification time before starting the manufacturing process, but not later than that. Such an arrangement is widely used for real estate mortgage. Consider a family who would like to buy a $100 000 house and want to finance this purchase with the help of an Islamic bank. It may make an up-front payment equalling 20 per cent ($20 000), leaving the bank to invest 80 per cent, or $80 000, in the house. The family’s monthly payment will comprise paying back rent to the bank plus a purchase of a certain portion of shares from the bank, until they effectively ‘buy it out’. The rent payments are legitimate because they are used to get a tangible asset that the family does not completely own, and are not paid to return borrowed money with interest. Sales contracts In the fiqh literature, there are frequently used sales contracts called bai’muajal and bai’ salam or conducting credit sales, that are similar to mortgage instruments. Bai’muajal refers to the sale of commodities or real estate against deferred payment and permits the
Slide 139: Marketing of Islamic financial products 121 immediate delivery of the product, while payment is delayed or pushed forward for an agreed-upon period without extra penalty, that could be made as a lump sum or in instalments. The distinguishing feature of this contract from any regular cash sale is the deferral of the payment. Bai’salam is also a deferred-delivery sale, and resembles a forward contract where the delivery of the product takes place in future in exchange for a spot payment. Strategic marketing approaches Besides using the regular marketing tools employed by conventional banks, Islamic banks have also developed their own marketing strategies to attract their target clientele. Some of these strategies are discussed next. Focus on believers The main niche for Islamic banks is target adherents to Islamic faith. They appeal to Muslim consumers’ basic capital needs. Islamic banks have been able to introduce a variety of financial products that are compliant with shari’a, while at the same time offering alternatives to conventional interest-based lending. Shari’a supervision A Shari’a Supervisory Board (SSB) guides shari’a compliance on behalf of the clients. The SSB is made up of distinguished Islamic legal scholars who assume responsibility for auditing shari’a compliance of a bank, including its marketing strategies, thereby functioning as a customer advocate representing the religious interest of investors (DeLorenzo, 2000). Special attributes of Islamic banks Hegazy (1995) investigated bank selection criteria for both Islamic and conventional banks, and concluded that the selection attributes for Islamic banks are different from conventional banks. For example, the most important factor used by Muslim consumers seeking Islamic financial products was the advice and recommendations made by relatives and friends. Convenience of location, friendliness of the personnel, and the bank’s vision of serving the Islamic community regardless of the expected profitability were also found to play important roles in the decision-making processes of individual and business clients. Identifying such features allows Islamic banks and institutions to develop appropriate marketing strategies to ensure high levels of customer satisfaction and retention by striving to develop appropriate marketing strategies (Metawa and Almossawi, 1998). Competing with conventional banks Marketing of Islamic financial products is faced with various types of competitive pressures from conventional banks. In this environment, Islamic banks have to formulate and implement successful marketing strategies in which a key ingredient is a clear understanding of the behaviour, attitudes and perceptions of their clients. This is achieved through identifying behavioural profiles encompassing banking habits, selection criteria used by target markets, risk-tolerance levels, awareness, preferences and usage patterns of various Islamic bank products (Metawa and Almossawi, 1998). Also Islamic banks offer many of the conventional banking services such as ATM machines, and credit cards to their clients at competitive prices.
Slide 140: 122 Handbook of Islamic banking Conveying trust and piety Among the more important attractions Islamic banks aim to portray are the characteristic traits of trust and piety. As Islamic-based institutions, the banks foster a God-abiding, trustworthy and pious image, that is well recognized and appreciated by religious consumers, offering a sense of reassurance that their investments are lawful (halal). Conveying credibility and experience Like conventional banks, Islamic banks aim to convince customers of their investment experience. An inexperienced customer, seeking a way to invest his/her savings, strongly appreciates evidence of credibility and past investment performance. In this way, the perhaps daunting task of investing is made easier and within reach. Complementing regular banks Islamic banks’ marketing strategy can be complementary to that of conventional banks. Services not offered by Islamic banks may be acquired from regular conventional banks while maintaining a sense of religious peace and trust by continuing the relationship with the Islamic banks. Marketing challenges Islamic banks share the same marketing challenges faced by regular (conventional) banks. However, they also have their own challenges that are related to their business line and constraints. Some of these challenges are discussed next. Competition from conventional banks The biggest challenge to Islamic banks, most less than three decades old, is to compete with a well developed and mature conventional banking industry evolving over the past many centuries. They need to know how to market their products successfully. While there are areas where Islamic and conventional banks pursue similar marketing strategies, there are also areas where Islamic banks pursue different strategies. Many individual and business consumers wish to have a guaranteed return on their investments and would thus have recourse to conventional banks based on zero-default interest payment, a factor that does not have a corresponding substitute in Islamic banks (Awad, 2000). Dealing with non-Islamic financial institutions Islamic banks often operate in a business environment where laws, institutions, attitudes, rules, regulations and norms serve an economy based on interest. They are faced with the problem of investing short-term deposits and paying returns on them to depositors, while conventional banks have no constraint, dealing with overnight or short-term deposits as well as charging interest on overdrafts. Delineating an appropriate target market is a prerequisite for the successful execution of marketing strategies by Islamic financial institutions. Maintaining competitive profits Low profit ratios could hurt Islamic banks as they rely solely on the profit and loss sharing (PLS) principle to market their financial products. PLS is a form of partnership, whereby owners and investors serve as business partners by sharing profits and losses on the basis of their capital share, labour and managerial expertise invested. There can be no guaranteed
Slide 141: Marketing of Islamic financial products 123 rate of return in such a case, although some investments (such as mark-up) provide more stable returns than others (such as mudaraba). The justification for the PLS financier’s share in profit is their efforts and the risks undertaken, making it legitimate in Islamic shari’a. Supervision and transparency Islamic institutions need to have some kind of regulatory supervision in day-to-day operations in order to protect their depositors and clients. Because of the differences in their nature and operations, Islamic banks require more strict supervision of the firms’ operations after the disbursement of funds. Banks’ supervision, scrutiny and examination, and sometimes participatory management in the conduct of firms’ operations, are important components of the Islamic financial marketing system set in place, because of the greater risks that the Islamic banks shoulder. In most countries there are no coherent standards of Islamic marketing regulations, and the lack of uniformity in accounting principles and shari’a guidelines makes it difficult for central bankers to regulate such an industry (Awaida, 1998). Thanks to the new standards adopted, such as auditing rules in Bahrain, new international standards are now applied by all Islamic banks, enhancing their transparency significantly. Regulatory hurdles Because Islamic banking operates on a risk-sharing basis, it may not be necessary to have the same obligation as conventional banks to carry certain levels of capital. However, some regulators take the view that, since Islamic banks are conducting new and unexplored financial pursuits with illiquid assets, they should perhaps have a greater safety margin than conventional banks (Awaida, 1998). In these cases an additional burden is placed on Islamic banks. Need for adequate human resources Marketing success hinges on having a highly-qualified and trained marketing team. Many problems in Islamic banks arise because of insufficient training of their marketing personnel (Kahf, 1999). Greater professionalism and competence instituted by proper training programmes are key ingredients for forging successful relationships with clients (Metawa and Almossawi, 1998). Developing new products Islamic banks must strive to provide specific products tailored to satisfy different segments of individual and business consumers. They can do so by employing strategies ranging from re-engineering products to focusing on some specific services (see Metawa and Almossawi, 1998), vis-à-vis conventional banks, which is seen as one of the biggest challenges to a broader acceptance of new Islamic financial products (Montagu-Pollock and Wright, 2002). Developing successful marketing strategies Success in marketing relies on the information retrieved from complete and up-to-date consumer profiles. The availability of such a database is needed for making plausible and effective decisions regarding the marketing of Islamic financial products. Moreover, Islamic financial institutions need recourse to periodic customer surveys to investigate whether clients are aware of new products and to ascertain how many of those products are being used on a regular basis and what benefits are sought by consumers.
Slide 142: 124 Handbook of Islamic banking Islamic institutions ought to pursue integrated promotion strategies that allow consumers to have adequate information about various products offered that, if properly carried out, will speed up the consumers’ learning about various Islamic products and attract new potential segments. Specific promotional and educational activities may need to be undertaken to increase the level of customer awareness and to narrow the gap in customer usage of these products caused by lack of proper awareness (Metawa and Almossawi, 1998). Balancing profit and development Islamic banks have presented themselves as providers of capital for entrepreneurs and business adventurers. In fact, most of their products (for example, murabaha, mudaraba, musharaka, salam and istisnaa) are investment banking-type products. To the disappointment of many Muslim consumers, most of the banks have focused on consumers’ loans and mortgages using variations of the above-named products rather than financing new ventures and capital expansion projects. Islamic banks argue that they were pressured to perform to offer a viable alternative to conventional banks during the formative years of their operations. Hence they focused on short-term lending rather than supporting long-term profitsharing activities. Now that these banks are more stable and mature, there is a the potential for them to carry out their intended responsibilities to fund longer-term projects. Promoting new client profiles Islamic banks generally target the following segments: younger generation, female consumers, educated consumers, wealthy consumers, and non-Muslim consumers. Each of these segments requires different marketing strategies, and a certain percentage of annual revenue should be set aside to cover them. Most Islamic banks devote insufficient funds for marketing in comparison with the millions of dollars invested by conventional banks to promote an image. The idea of an Islamic bank, as seen today, was non-existent not so many years ago and there are still many questions among customers, Muslims and nonMuslims alike. Industrial marketing: business to business marketing A large contribution to Islamic banking’s increasing global success may have been made by major global multinationals (MNCs), operating throughout the Muslim world, which have begun to turn to Islamic financial products as an alternative source of funding for everything from trade finance to equipment leasing. Examples include IBM, General Motors and Xerox, which have raised money through a US-based Islamic Leasing Fund set up by the United Bank of Kuwait, while international oil giants such as Enron and Shell have used Islamic banks to finance their global operations across the Arab Gulf region and Malaysia. Islamic financial institutions are marketing their products across 15 major non-Muslim countries, encompassing the US, Canada, Switzerland, the UK, Denmark and Australia (Martin, 1997, 2005). Although Islamic financial institutions employ classical marketing tools encompassing the four Ps of marketing-mix (product, price, promotion and place/distribution), their marketing strategies employ different orientations. This is due to the unique attributes of Islamic financial products, on one hand, and the distinctive psychographic (lifestyle and personality) profiles of its consumer market, on the other, as reflected in consumers’
Slide 143: Marketing of Islamic financial products 125 religious belief structures influencing their behavioural attitudes and dispositions. For instance, these institutions avoid using sexy models in their promotional campaigns while promoting their products. Many do not aggressively market their Islamic products, but rather depend largely on word of mouth for promotion and distribution of flyers among attendees of mosques, Islamic educational institutions and Islamic centres. Similarly, Citibank does not necessarily employ an aggressive promotional campaign for the successful execution of its marketing strategy, but rather relies on its globally renowned brand for generating awareness among its consumer and business segments. Non-Muslims as a target market Another factor contributing to the current surge in the Islamic financial industry is the innovative, competitive and risk-sharing nature of Islamic financial products, providing non-Muslims with attractive and viable alternatives to conventional Western banking instruments. Hence, global financial professionals such as Montagu-Pollock and Wright (2002) believe that the crux of the industry lies in non-Muslim companies and investors taking an interest in tapping it like any other pool of liquidity, or investing in it for no other reason than something that presents a good investment opportunity. Dudley (1998) believes that the future of Islamic banking lies in the idea not to sell Islamic products to Muslims, but rather to sell them to anybody, on the basis of its inherent advantages over other financial alternatives. Critical evaluation A vocal and assertive segment of ‘ultrareligious Muslim consumers’ has serious reservations about non-Islamic banks’ involvement in marketing Islamic financial products. They have demonstrated resentment towards the entry of Western and traditional banks in the foray of Islamic banking industry as their vast and traditional operations are contrary to the tenets of Islamic piety. In their opinion, this would not be dissimilar to the Johnny Walker Whisky Company introducing ‘Halal Zamzam’ bottled water, as a part of its brand extension strategy, to the dismay of a large Muslim population. On another front, funds of these regular banks are drawn, at least partially, from earnings sources that are Islamically doubtful, and are carried over into the Islamic financial products. Purifying or cleansing these assets originating from prohibited earnings is an almost insurmountable challenge, as well as shifting the burden of purification to Muslim users. Hence regular banks, practising both Islamic and non-Islamic banking, generally concentrate on more liberal segments of Muslim consumers, who are more lenient about the Western versus Islamic bank distinction, and ignore the ultrareligious segments who resent conventional banks’ entering the Islamic financial industry, as they cannot meet their strict religious criteria. The bottom line is that the regular and non-Islamic banks are perceived as not having entered this industry to serve ‘Muslim Umma’, but to make money under the pretext of ‘Islamic banking’. Ultrareligious Muslims do not wish to ban these banks from serving Islamic financial products when these products are sought by fund users (Muslims and non-Muslims); they simply do not themselves deal with them. Future scenarios Islamic banking cannot rest on its laurels. With the advent of the Islamic windows of conventional banks and on-line banking, strong competition has to be faced. The current
Slide 144: 126 Handbook of Islamic banking marketing challenge for Islamic institutions is to orchestrate strategies promoting competitive, dynamic and sustainable Islamic financial products in order to respond to the requirements of local economies and the international financial market, via innovation of products (Aziz, 2005). Innovation is the key to sustainable and competitive marketing advantage for the future growth of Islamic financial markets. Both innovation speed and innovation magnitude have beneficial effects on an institution’s financial performance. Hence Islamic financial marketers should be responsive to the evolving needs of Islamic investors and borrowers (Edwardes, 1995). Although Islamic banks have been able to grow quickly, their growth has been constrained by a lack of innovation. Developing new Islamic financial products in compliance with the shari’a is challenging. Failure to provide the full range and the right quality of products according to shari’a will defeat the very purpose behind Islamic banks’ existence and will lead to difficulties in retaining current customers and attracting new ones. However, a successful implementation of quality systems, involving shari’a scholars and modern corporate finance experts in a Total Quality Management (TQM) exercise, for instance, can help enhance institutional creativity, leading to innovations. The Islamic banks can learn from successful conventional banks by employing appropriate Customer Relationship Management (CRM) strategies. There should also be intensive collaborative efforts among Islamic ‘financial engineers’ and shari’a scholars to accelerate the pace of innovation. Islamic institutions should also promote knowledge and awareness of their products among their employees by employing internal marketing strategies. This awareness is an important tool as Islamic banks strive to develop close relationships with individual and business clients. They might thereby gain a competitive advantage based on superior customer relationships (Rice and Essam, 2001) and at the same time gain insights, through customer collaboration and feedback, into new customer needs and wants. Education and awareness programmes in the general Islamic community will generate a higher demand for Islamic financial products that could then be customized to the requirements of better informed consumers. This would also help Islamic banks craft specific strategies aimed at capturing unexplored market segments. Collaboration efforts between Islamic banks and conventional banks could bring Islamic products to the mass-market and ultimately develop global distribution capabilities. The IT revolution might also help the Islamic institutions, creating new information portals enabling them to deliver products to consumers through different distribution channels at reduced cost and competitive prices (Aziz, 2004). Thus advances need to be made on a number of fronts. A qualified and skilled workforce well versed in both shari’a and modern corporate financial management is indispensable for innovation. Widening the product range calls for substantial and continuous investment in research and development (R&D). In this context, an industry-sponsored research and training institute, Islamic Banking and Finance Institute Malaysia (IBFIM), deserves special mention, for it has been established to undertake collaborative research with academics at the Malaysian universities aimed at developing unique and innovative Islamic financial offerings across Malaysia (www.ibfim.com). Tomorrow’s successful marketers of Islamic financial products will be those who identify and anticipate the evolving needs of the Islamic consumer and pioneer product innovations and improvements to meet those needs (Edwardes, 1995) and should also be able to address non-Muslim financing needs.
Slide 145: Marketing of Islamic financial products References 127 Awad, Y. (2000), ‘Reality and problems of Islamic banking’, unpublished MBA dissertation, AUB Librairies, American University of Beirut. Awaida, H. (1998), ‘Islamic banking in perspective’, unpublished MBA dissertation, AUB Libraries, American University of Beirut. Aziz Akhtar, Z. (2004), ‘The future prospects of Islamic financial services industry’, speech by Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia, at the IFSB interactive session, Bali, 31 March. Aziz Akhtar, Z. (2005), ‘Islamic finance: promoting the competitive advantage’, Governor’s keynote address at the Islamic Bankers’ Forum, Putrajaya, Malaysia, 21 June. DeLorenzo, Y.T. (2000), ‘Sharia supervision of Islamic mutual funds’, Proceedings of the 4th Harvard Forum on Islamic Finance, Cambridge: Harvard Islamic Finance Information Program, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University, http://www. azzadfund.com (accessed July 2002). Dudley, N. (1998), ‘Islamic banks aim for the mainstream’, Euromoney, 349, 113. Edwardes, Warren (1995), ‘Competitive pricing of Islamic financial products’, New Horizon, May, 39, 4–6. El-Gamal, Mahmoud A. (2000), A Basic Guide to Contemporary Islamic Banking and Finance, Indiana: Islamic Banking & Finance America. Hegazy, I.A. (1995), ‘An empirical comparative study between Islamic and commercial banks’ selection criteria in Egypt’, International Journal of Contemporary Management, 5 (3), 46–61. Iqbal, Z. (1997), ‘Islamic financial systems’, Finance & Development, 34 (2), 42–4. Kahf, Monzer (1999), ‘Islamic banks at the threshold of the third millennium’, Thunderbird International Business Review, 41, 445–60. Lewis, Mervyn K. and Latifa M. Algaoud (2001), Islamic Banking, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing. Martin, J. (1997), ‘Islamic banking raises interest’, Management Review, 86 (10), 25. Martin, J. (2005), ‘Islamic banking goes global’, Middle East, 357, 50. Metawa, Saad A. and M. Almossawi (1998), ‘Banking behavior of Islamic bank customers: perspectives and implications’, The International Journal of Bank Marketing, 16 (7), 299–313. Montagu-Pollock, M. and C. Wright (2002), ‘The many faces of Islamic finance’, Asiamoney, 13 (7), 31. Rice, G. and M. Essam (2001), ‘Integrating quality management, creativity and innovation in Islamic banks’, paper presented at the American Finance House – Lariba 8th Annual International Conference, Pasadena, CA, 16 June.
Slide 146: 9 Governance of Islamic banks Volker Nienhaus Opaqueness and agency problems in banking Today it is the exception rather than the rule that owners manage their companies. Usually ownership and management are separated, and managers who control the resources of a company have a better knowledge of its status, risks and opportunities than the owners. The separation of ownership and control combined with information asymmetries gives rise to various agency problems. The core issue of governance of a corporation is how to ensure that managers will use a company’s resources in the interest of the shareholders. Because of banks’ specifics, governance issues are more relevant in this sector than in other industries. It is widely accepted that banks are opaque institutions and that information asymmetries between insiders and outsiders are pronounced, especially with respect to the risk characteristics and the quality of the assets (especially the loan portfolio). The peculiarities of the financing business make it at best very difficult and costly or at worst factually impossible for outsiders to monitor effectively and in timely fashion the performance of bank managers. The usual remedy for agency problems – incentive contracts – does not go well in banking: not only are outcomes difficult to measure, but they are also relatively easy to influence or to manipulate by managers. For example, if compensations are linked to the interest income earned by a bank, managers may extend high interest loans to borrowers in trouble, thus increasing the risk exposure of the bank. For outsiders such a practice is nearly impossible to detect. If the compensation is linked to asset prices, managers may have sufficient resources at their disposal to move the prices in a favourable direction, at least for a limited period of time. ‘Furthermore, since managers frequently control the boards of directors that write the incentive contracts, managers of opaque banks can often design compensation packages that allow managers to benefit at the expense of the long-run health of the bank’ (Levine, 2004, p. 8). Finally the strong information asymmetries make hostile takeovers far less probable in banking than in other industries. This limits the effectiveness of competition as an instrument for the protection of shareholders’ interests. However, not only may the shareholders’ capital be put at risk by management decisions, but – in the case of insolvency – also outside capital provided by debt holders (creditors) and, in particular, depositors. Depositors may be protected by deposit insurance schemes (which create incentives for bank managers to take even more risk), but this only shifts financial burdens to other outsiders in a case of bankruptcy. Therefore the scope of corporate governance has been enlarged for banking to include not only shareholders but also depositors. Corporate governance shall be seen ‘as the methods by which suppliers of finance control managers in order to ensure that their capital cannot be expropriated and that they earn a return on their investment . . . [B]ecause of the peculiar contractual form of banking, corporate governance mechanisms for banks should encapsulate depositors as well as shareholders’ (Arun and Turner, 2003, p. 5). 128
Slide 147: Governance of Islamic banks 129 These statements for conventional banks are even more relevant for Islamic banks because for them depositors are exposed to a much higher risk than in conventional banks. Strictly speaking, most funds credited to customer accounts in Islamic banks are legally not deposits. A main characteristic of a deposit is the unconditional claim for full repayment of the principal amount. In Islamic banks, this claim holds true only for money paid into current accounts which are intended for payment transactions and do not generate any income for the account holders. Shari’a-compliant accounts which are intended to generate an income (usually named savings or investment accounts) are not vested with an unconditional claim for full repayment. Investment accounts are based on a mudaraba type of contract. This implies a participation in the financial results of the employment of funds – be it profit or loss. In the case of loss, the investment account holders cannot claim the full repayment of their principal amount. Investment account holders of Islamic banks bear risks very similar to those of the shareholders, but they do not have any right to monitor and control the management. This provides a strong justification for adopting the broad view of corporate governance for Islamic banks and to include the interests of investment account holders (that is, ‘Islamic depositors’) in corporate governance mechanisms. Governance structures of conventional and Islamic banks do not only differ with respect to the status of the depositors. In most Islamic financial institutions, an additional body is part of the governance structure which has no counterpart in conventional banks, namely the Shari’a Supervisory Board (SSB). Figure 9.1 summarizes the stylized governance structures of conventional and Islamic banks. In conventional banks, the classical agency problem is that between management and shareholders. Internal solutions may be found through procedural rules and incentive contracts. External support could come from banking regulations, especially prudential Shari’a board management shareholders management shareholders depositors investment account holders competition competition general commercial law and banking regulations specific Islamic law and banking regulations general commercial law and banking regulations Figure 9.1 Stylized governance structures of conventional and Islamic banks
Slide 148: 130 Handbook of Islamic banking regulations dealing with reporting and disclosure rules, early warning systems and state supervision. Profit-and-loss sharing ‘deposits’ (investment accounts) In a conventional banking system with effective competition for depositors’ funds, the income interests of depositors are safeguarded by this competition, and regulations dealing with capital adequacy and deposit insurance protect the principal amount of their deposits. Thus the resolution of conflicts of interest between depositors and management on the one hand and depositors and shareholders on the other hand does not require too many ‘benevolent’ discretionary decisions by managers and shareholders but is widely enacted by market forces and state regulations. This is very different in Islamic banks. First, there is a fundamental conflict of interest between Islamic depositors and shareholders: both parties share (substantial parts of) the bank’s profit, and this implies a distribution conflict. The ratio by which the profit is shared is numerically not defined in the Islamic deposit contracts. It is set by management decision. The management’s discretionary margin would be limited by an effective competition amongst banks for Islamic deposits, but it cannot be taken for granted that such a competition does exist. In many Islamic countries where conventional and Islamic financial institutions coexist, the market is dominated by conventional banks, the number of domestic Islamic financial institutions is very small (often fewer than five), and the regulated financial markets are not open for an outflow of funds or for an inflow of international competitors (with only a few exceptions such as Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan). Very often the benchmarks for Islamic products, including Islamic deposits, are taken from the conventional interest-based sector and are applied in analogy to Islamic products. For example, the return on Islamic deposits is roughly kept in line by management decisions with interest earned on conventional deposits. Such a practice, however, does not take into consideration the different risk positions of insured conventional and uninsured Islamic depositors, and it does not reflect the risk profile of the assets of the Islamic bank. a. Islamic depositors may not be fully aware of the risk and therefore are satisfied with a rate of return equivalent to the prevailing interest rate. In this case the management of an Islamic bank would exploit the depositors’ lack of information either to cover higher operating costs (which could include compensation packages for the management itself) or to increase the residual income (profit share) of the shareholders. A similar situation could emerge even if the Islamic depositors were aware of the higher risks but did not have an Islamic alternative in a mixed system without competition in the Islamic segment (because only one or very few non-competing Islamic banks offer Islamic deposits). In this case the management of Islamic banks could exploit the ‘Islam-mindedness’ of the depositors and pay a return which is less than what would be risk-equivalent in the conventional system. b. Smoothing returns Another practice deserves attention from a governance perspective: the returns for Islamic deposits seemingly fluctuate less than the income generated by the employment of the funds on Islamic deposit accounts. The reason is that the management has recourse to
Slide 149: Governance of Islamic banks 131 smoothing techniques which allow it to delink the profits allocated to depositors in a given period from the investment returns of the same period and to keep the Islamic returns in line with movements of the benchmark interest rate. Smoothing can be achieved by two different techniques: the variation of reserves and the commingling of funds. a. Islamic banks can create a profit equalization reserve. In a period of high returns, the management can decide to transfer parts of the income and profits from the investment of Islamic deposits to the reserve in that period. In the opposite case, that is, in a period of low returns, the management can decide to reduce the reserve, thus increasing the amount available for distribution in that period. Many Islamic banks dispose of a relatively large volume of return-free deposits on current accounts. After catering for a sufficient liquidity reserve, the bank may invest the remainder and generate an income. This income is not due to the depositors; rather it increases the profits due to the shareholders. The current account deposits must not be invested separately but can be commingled with investment account deposits or/and shareholders’ funds. It is at the discretion of the management to transfer parts of the income from the current account funds to the profits to be shared with the Islamic depositors. This allows a return on Islamic deposits which is above the level which would be possible if only the income from the investment of the Islamic deposits were distributed. This stabilizes the return on Islamic deposits without a reduction of the profit equalization reserve. b. Both the use of profit equalization reserves and the commingling of funds are recognized practices of Islamic banks which are deemed shari’a-compliant (although there are some different opinions on specific terms and details, especially with respect to the commingling of funds), and at first glance they seem to be in the interests of depositors. But a closer look reveals some conceptual and governance issues of these practices. The commingling of funds can work in favour of the Islamic depositors only as long as the Islamic banks dispose of an above-average level of funds in current accounts. There are reasons to expect that in the long run – especially after depositors have gained more experience with Islamic banks, more credible regulations of Islamic banks have been enacted, and competition within the Islamic banking sector has been established – the level of funds in current accounts will be reduced to a lower level comparable to that of current accounts in conventional banks. This will severely restrict or even eliminate the potentials for a stabilization of Islamic depositors’ returns through the allocation of profits generated from the investment of current accounts. But as long as this technique is applied, the criticism is valid that it is not well documented and cannot be monitored and assessed by outsiders from the information published in reports of Islamic banks. This clearly adds to the opaqueness of Islamic banks and to the information asymmetries. While the effects of the commingling of funds seem to be in the interest of the Islamic depositors, this is far less clear with respect to the profit equalization reserve. If, in the long run, the effect of the smoothing is that the returns on Islamic deposits keep in line with benchmark interest rates, this may not be to the advantage of the Islamic depositors who bear a higher risk than their conventional counterparts. If one does not look at the long run but at shorter periods, then the practice of smoothing through appropriations to or from reserves has the effect that depositors do not fully
Slide 150: 132 Handbook of Islamic banking participate in the income or profit generated by the investment of their funds. If they held Islamic deposits during a period of a net increase of reserves, they share a smaller percentage of the income or profit generated by the employment of the funds at the disposal of the Islamic bank during the respective period than those who held their Islamic deposits during a period of a net reduction of reserves. This is a kind of ‘intergenerational’ shift of portions of income or profit to be shared which was not to be found in the traditional mudaraba or musharaka contracts (which assumed a definite termination of a transaction whose profits were to be shared). The mudaraba-inspired modern Islamic deposit contracts which allow such practices have been sanctioned by shari’a experts, and AAOIFI has issued accounting standards for profit equalization reserves. Furthermore each Islamic depositor accepts the terms for investment accounts. Thus there is no doubt about the legality of the smoothing of returns, but that is no guarantee that the smoothing is done in the interests of depositors. One could argue that smoothing is in harmony with the preferences of risk-averse Islamic depositors (who are willing to forgo some profit shares for a reduced volatility of the expected return). But, unless a bank offers different investment accounts which differ in their risk/return profiles, the empirical relevance of this argument is hard to assess. And even if the preference argument is basically correct, one has to consider that the decision on the concrete figures for the appropriations to or from reserves is at the discretion of the management. It is possible that the decision is guided by the interests of the Islamic depositors, the shareholders or the management. Outside observers will not be able to prove or disprove any specific assumption: neither calculation methods nor concrete figures are open to the public. From balance sheets and income statements outsiders can only see the appropriations to or from reserves, while the underlying income from the employment of current account deposits and investment account deposits is usually not disclosed. Therefore it is hardly possible to assess the sustainability of a given return on Islamic deposits. Erosion of Islamic distinctiveness and systemic opaqueness Smoothing of investment account returns implies a governance problem at the systemic level, assuming that shareholders and Islamic depositors are interested in an Islamic financial system which is clearly distinct from conventional banking and which follows its own logic. A core concept of Islamic finance is that of an equitable sharing of profits and losses or of risks and chances between the providers and the users of funds. The practice of smoothing returns moves the system in the opposite direction. It is not only that smoothing emulates fixed returns on deposits, it also links the Islamic deposit business economically to the interest-based system. If depositors are aware of smoothing practices in the past which kept the returns on Islamic deposits roughly in line with the prevailing market rate for interest-bearing deposits,1 and if they expect the same practice in the future, they will form expectations on the future returns which are based on interest rates. These interest rates reflect, inter alia, the profitability of investments in the interest-based financial sector (including government bonds), the demand for and supply of money market funds, exchange rate speculations and hedging activities, as well as the competitive situation in the conventional financial sector. At least conceptually, Islamic financial institutions should not be involved in such types of transactions and markets, and their profitability