Islamic microfinance provides an alternative model for a significant number of underprivileged people who are not served by conventional microfinance. In order to give access to sustainable services to a greater extent, the Islamic microfinance is in paramount need of the adoption of innovative business models and sound practices into the industry. To this end, the research seeks to provide theoretical basis, operational framework, and empirical support for the establishment of Islamic microfinance institutions. The theoretical discussions and empirical evidence will emphasize on the importance of social financial intermediation to finance microenterprises and a need to develop specialized model to do the same. Problems facing by conventional micro finance institutions include non-graduation from poverty, debt trap, high dropout rate, asymmetric information and economic visibility of the project. The study finds that waqf based microfinance institutions can play an important tole inter alia in financial inclusion and developing socio-economic conditions of the poor and underprivileged people in society.
Majority of Shari'ah scholars maintained the opinion that conventional insurance is not permissible in Shari'ah due to the elements of gharar "uncertainty", maysir "gambling" and riba "usury" that was found on it. This necessitated the establishment of takaful "Islamic Insurance" in the late 1970s, but this also did not go without criticisms as there are different opinions among Islamic scholars and also legal and regulatory practitioners on the permissibility of surplus sharing and takaful models that has been adopted by takaful operators ...
