Newsletter & Bulletin

Humans are living in trying times, brought on mostly by their own hands. Increasing climate-related devastation, strange pandemics (e.g., Zika, Ebola, COVID-19 and Monkeypox), and wars that mostly support weapons-producing nations and the corporate/political elite have led to a widening of economic disparity and human suffering. Probably the most seriousof humanity's unbridled obsessions for more is food. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) estimates that more than 30 per cent of food is wasted in the United States and Europe alone. But has production met increasing consumption patterns? Some wealthy nations like the USA and China have increased crop yields. However, medium- to long-term yields are on the decline, affecting output and food price and severely impacting food security and poverty in developing nations. A recent study by Hasegawa et al. (2021) found that Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are most at risk of hunger over the next 30 years, resulting from uncertainties in extreme climate impact. Nevertheless, most reports will have us believe that the percentage of poverty and hunger has decreased.

Disruption of banking services over the last five years has evolved into a more normative expectation of new financial technology (fintech) with varied offerings and competitive solutions compared to incumbent (traditional, mainstream) banks. National initiatives have also focused on building micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the aftermath of the pandemic and have successfully applied digital transformation strategies to support their market inclusion. For example, Southeast Asian economies rely on MSMEs as they represent almost 70 per cent of the respective national labour forces and over 40 per cent of the countries� gross domestic product (GDP) (Asian Development Bank, 2020). The big challenge has been access to financing for entrepreneurs, where over 60 per cent of surveyed MSMEs claimed they were unable to access financing (Harvard Business Review, 2021).

The term gig economy was first coined in 2009 by Tina Brown, the editor-in-chief of the Daily Beast, an online news magazine. At the time of her writing, the world was bearing the brunt of the global economic recession. The ensuing economic woes accelerated the proliferation of gig workers who made a living by taking on on-demand jobs as part-timers, freelancers, independent contractors and project-based workers. Fast forward eleven years to 2020, the economic downturn from massive layoffs and business closures triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic is seeing the spur of worldwide gig economic activities. The widespread use of the Internet and the rise of digital platforms have helped those who lost their jobs to use them to make a living, sparking the popularity and exponential growth of this sector. The gig economy, also dubbed the 'sharing economy', 'collaborative economy', 'digital economy', 'crowd economy', and 'peer economy', is recognised as a new economic source of revenue across the globe and in Malaysia too. With close to four million freelance workers in Malaysia, and increasing by the day, the gig economy forms a key part of the Twelfth Malaysia Plan (2021-2025) (Lim, 2021).

A near three-year protracted COVID-19 pandemic since the 2019 first outbreak in Wuhan, China, has hugely impacted all the basic economic units: the household, the firm and the government. Over the two-year period from 2 January 2020 to 15 January 2022, the following five industries: airlines; hotels, restaurants and leisure; energy equipment and services; automobiles, and specialty retail were most affected by lockdowns and social distancing intended to curtail the spread of COVID-19 (S&P Global Market Intelligence, 2022). Many of these industries are small businesses requiring a longer period to recover and return to their pre-pandemic state. One of these businesses' immediate measures was retrenching a certain percentage of employees to reduce operational costs. For the retrenched employees who need to find other sources of income to survive, the gig economy, which had gained attention after the global financial crisis in 2008, is an attractive alternative for them to earn a living. This article sheds light on the growth drivers of gig workforce after the COVID-19 pandemic and how advantageous this new economic trend is to the Islamic finance industry.

The doctrine of judicial precedent plays an empirical role in common law, but it has only persuasive value in European continent countries which are practicing civil law system.It has not been recognised as having binding force in Islamic judicial system. In Islam, each case has to be decided based on its own merit and previous decisions can only be considered as guidance for the future cases. This position is still being maintained by some countries such as Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. In Pakistan and Nigeria the doctrine of judicial precedent is applied in deciding cases. Due to this contradiction among Islamic judicial system in various countries, a question arises relating to the feasibility of the application of the doctrine of judicial precedent in Shariah courts. Accordingly, in this paper, the factual nature of the judicial precedents in Islamic judicial systems have been examined comparatively in some details with reference to some selected countries such as Malaysia, Nigeria and Pakistan. This paper points out that the doctrine of stare decisis and judicial precedent can be applied in Shariah courts as guiding precedents but not as binding since there is no express prohibition in Shariah to take judicial guidance from previous decisions.

Humans are social creatures that live based on interaction with one another, including economic activities and pandemics that brings unpredictable negative social and economic impact. The COVID-19 pandemic has now reshaped globalization and transformed the industrial society into an Information and digital society. This third-wave (Toffler, 1984) is mark by the widespread use of internet-based information technology, digital service industries with artificial intelligence as the driving of economic and social development. Meanwhile, COVID-19 has also shown a big gap between large companies with substantial market capitalizations such as Microsoft, Apple, [Alphabet] and Facebook in the developed economies that survive the pandemic. Similarly, in emerging and developing countries, their small-medium enterprises that forms the back-bone of their economy are also surviving this pandemic better than other businesses.