There is a critical gap in literature in studying the portfolio diversification opportunities available to sukuk investors and evaluating these in the light of held-to-maturity strategies usually adopted by these investors. This paper has made an initial attempt to study the portfolio diversification strategies for sukuk portfolios across heterogeneous investment horizons. Our findings critically indicate that returns between local currency sukuk in different markets generally have low levels of correlations across different investor holding periods, thus enabling both short and long-run portfolio diversification benefits. However, in contrast, international currency sukuk issued in different markets exhibit high levels of correlations in the longer-term investor holding periods. Also in the domestic market context, returns on different classes of domestic sukuk are found to exhibit strong correlations in the longer-holding periods. Our findings critically highlight the feasibility of held-to-maturity sukuk investment strategies from a portfolio diversification perspective.

Recent literature draws attention to the issue of whether heterogeneity in investment horizons has an effect on resulting investor exposures. In this article, using Malaysia as a case study, we make the first attempt to examine comovement dynamics of Islamic equity returns to identify international portfolio diversification opportunities for investors having heterogeneous investment horizons. We use three recent and appropriate methodologies: M-GARCH-DCC, Continuous Wavelet Transforms (CWT), and Maximum Overlap Discrete Wavelet Transform (MODWT). The results significantly tend to indicate that effective portfolio diversification opportunities between our sample markets exist mainly for short holding periods while for longer investment horizons, where investor stockholding periods exceed one year, the markets appear to be mostly highly correlated yielding minimal portfolio diversification benefits. Overall, the results critically highlight the significance of heterogeneity in investment horizons and bear important implications for portfolio diversification strategies

The paper presents arguments on the need for inventing the profession of Shari'ah auditing and why Malaysia should take the lead to create an Association of Chartered Shari'ah Accountants and Auditors (ACSAA) that can result in long run economic benefits for the country. The paper also critically analyzes how accounting and auditing membership is being exported worldwide by few dominant players to generate economic benefits for their respective origin countries and how existing Islamic accounting and auditing qualification suppliers have failed to deliver and create holistic Shari'ah accountants/auditors required to serve in an ideal Islamic economy. The paper proposes 2 models through which ACSAA can be made a practical reality.

This paper provides a detailed explanation about the contract of qard (loan) as approved by Shari’ ah and analyses how it is applied in the contemporary Islamic finance industry. With regard to research mentod, it examines various Islamic banking and finance products sturctured on the principle of qard contracts and discussed the possible risks of non-Shari’ ah compliance in their structuring, and how they can be addressed and resolved. The main finding is that the issue og profiting from qard hasan contracts is very sensitive and many institutions are possibly compromising on Shari’ah compliance through use of service charges and customary hibah-giving, etc. It is significant and attracts the attention of Islamic financial institutions to re-visit their products structured on qard hasan contracts. In general, it outlines the features of qard hasan contract and its application for benefit of the practitioners of Islamic banking all over the world.