Keynote & Speech

The slides "Maqasid al Syariah as the guiding principles of the past, present and future life" presented by Professor Dr. Zulkarnain Muhamad Sori at the 3rd Kuala Lumpur International Islamic Studies Civilization Conference (KLIISC), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Finance can be thought of as an engine of transformation and intermediation that bridges gaps between financial surplus and deficit units, between now and the future and between certainty of now and uncertainty of the future. It transforms value through maturity and risk transformation. This crucial function can be considered the reason for existence of finance. It creates incentives for surplus units to postpone the certainty of their financial resources now to the uncertainty of, presumably, higher amount of these resources in the future. It also encourages the deficit units to bring the future uncertain plans forward to the more certain present. Both units take risks. In other words, finance makes both units risk takers. The surplus units risk their resources now for more in a highly uncertain future. The deficit units risk being able to validate their obligations with a higher income stream in an uncertain future. How can finance become sacralised?

It gives me very great pleasure indeed to be invited by my dear brother Dr Muhammad Syafii Antonio the Head of Tazkia University College of Islamic Economics to deliver this address at the 11th convocation. I have been requested to speak on the role of higher learning institutions in the development of Islamic finance. This is a very appropriate topic for this occasion when the Islamic Finance landscape has made tremendous progress within a short period of about four decades and is facing various challenges that need to be addressed if we want to bring it to the next level. Let us first serf the current landscape of Islamic finance.

The slides highlight: 1) the development of Islamic banking and finance in Malaysia; 2) problem of over emphasizing banking and finance and ignoring economics; 3) Islamic economics objectives; 4) development of Islamic economics as a field of knowledge.

The slides highlight: 1) series of global financial crises; 2) risk transfer narrative; 3) relationship of debt and religion; 4) risk sharing contracts of Islamic finance.