Keynote & Speech

Slides that accompanied the keynote speech delivered at the International Webinar on Role of Zakah as an Islamic Social Finance Tool in Realising SDGs, 20 February 2021.

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) the GCC and recent studies; 2) oil-macro-financial linkages; 4) modellling and preliminary results.

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?

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.

The slides highlight: 1) funding growth without debt; 2) risk sharing contracts of Islamic finance; 3) issue and challenges.