Academic Proceeding

For Muslims zakat is obligatory and different jurisdictions in the world have different mechanisms to administer it. Maldives is a hundred percent Muslim country and zakat administration in the country is unique. As such the objective of the paper is to discuss the zakat administration in Maldives with special reference to zakat al mal and to discuss the challenges facing the existing way of zakat administration. The paper also includes ways to overcome the challenges. No literature on this area in Maldives could be found and as such reference to primary materials such as unpublished statistics, reports, brochures have been made. It is hoped that this paper will encourage further research on this area in Maldives.

Malaysia is a multi religious and a multi ethnic society with a plural legal structure. The banking system of country is essentially dual in nature and hence, there are two different sets of legal framework working simultaneously. Today, the Islamic Banking system which emerged in 1983 has levelled up to the conventional banking system which had rooted itself in the society a long time ago. Whether we believe it or not there are challenges and clashes at hand due to the existence of the dual system in the society and they need to be addressed properly, so that the clashes between these two types of banking system can be minimized. There are several quarrels between conventional and Islamic Banking laws. Some of these clashes are created due to the application of common law or conventional law based legislation to resolve the problems in the Islamic banking system. The impact of this is huge, primarily because, Islamic economics has a different premise from conventional banking and applying the same legal principles to resolve disputes for both markets does not work. Unlike conventional banking�s capitalist conviction that winner takes all, Islam argues for a fair distribution of profit and loss and bans purely speculative activity.

Maldives is a tourism driven economy, which contributes more than one fourth of the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). While tourism sector supplies over 70% of the foreign exchange earnings to the country, one third of the government revenue is generated from this sector. Tourism is also known as the leading employment generator in the country. The objective of this paper is to formulate ways in which Maldives could pioneer Islamic tourism and to create the Islamic tourism strategies which the country will adopt. This is a qualitative research where primary data analyzed are tourism related laws and guidelines issued in Maldives and in different parts of the world and the secondary data analyzed are from newspapers, journals and books on the subject. It is anticipated that this paper will assist the government of Maldives to understand the strategies that could be adopted in implementing Islamic tourism.

India is the home country for many Muslims and effective management of zakah is essential to the country. In this era of technology, it is imperative to fuse technology with zakat to ensure that the classical zakat administration approaches are upgraded to the uruf or customary practices of the society. The objective of this paper is to find out the potential of using technology in upgrading zakat administration in India. This is a qualitative approach where the primary sources such as zakat administration laws in India and secondary sources such as journal articles and published reports on the subject are analysed to derive conclusions. The findings of this paper suggests that the innovations such as rice ATMs, mobile applications, applications made with blockchain technology, artificial intelligence and big data can also play a vital role in the effective management of zakat in India. It is anticipated that the outcome of this research will assist the zakat administrators in India to adopt technology in this regard.

The use of blockchain technology in financing has been based on its high benefits of efficiency and transparency. However, not many in-depth discussions have been done on such blockchain utilization for Islamic social finance or the metaverse. This paper further explores these three areas of blockchain, the metaverse and Islamic social finance by proposing the use of blockchain and the metaverse for social projects of providing education to the underprivileged with the use of Islamic social finance instruments. In fulfilling this objective this research will explain how blockchain technology was applied in Islamic social finance through the case study of Blossom Smart sukuk, thereafter the opportunities for education under Islamic financial principles through blockchain in metaverse will be explored. The authors believe that further innovation in this area would see renaissance in Islamic social finance both in the real world and in metaverse.