Recent calls for risk-sharing - as expounded in the 2012 Kuala Lumpur Declaration, the 2014 Jeddah Declaration and the 2014 International Monetary Fund statement - elucidate the present situation of Islamic banking and finance: an acknowledgement that risk sharing is a "salient characteristic" of Islamic financial transactions on the one hand and that it is "not deeply embedded" on the other. The objective of this practical evidence-based research paper is to address this schism between prescription and practice. It recapitulates the principles underpinning risk sharing and the reasons why it is integral to the Shar??ah and why (as stated in the Declaration) risk transfer and risk shifting violate a Shari'ah principle. he paper presents preliminary research utilizing empirical data from Malaysian Islamic banks and the Malaysian stock market as a proxy for the real economy. It considers newly enacted Malaysian legislation, the Islamic Financial Services Act 2013 (IFSA), from the perspective of its aim to more clearly define the products and activities of Islamic banks.