Ethical Dimensions of Islamic Finance

This book provides an introductory theoretical foundation of the ethics embedded in Islamic economics and finance, and it shows how this ethical framework could pave the way to economic and social justice. It demonstrates how Islamic finance—a risk-sharing and asset-backed finance—has embedded universal values, ethical rules, and virtues, and how these qualities may be applied to a supposedly value-neutral social science to influence policy-making. This book argues that ethical and responsible finance, such as Islamic finance, could lead the efforts to achieve sustainable economic development. Iqbal and Mirakhor then conduct a comparative analysis of Islamic and conventional financial systems and present Islamic finance as an alternative that can address today’s growing problems of inequality, social injustice, financial repression, unethical leadership, and lack of opportunity to share prosperity.

Author Biography

Zamir Iqbal is VP Finance and CFO of the Islamic Development Bank. Prior to this role, he served as head of the World Bank’s Global Islamic Finance Development Center in Turkey. He is a coauthor of Challenges in Economic and Financial Policy Formulation (2014) and a coeditor of the Palgrave Studies in Islamic Banking, Finance, and Economics series.

Abbas Mirakhor is the First Holder of Islamic Finance Chair at INCEIF – The Global University of Islamic Finance, Malaysia. He is a coauthor of Challenges in Economic and Financial Policy Formulation (2014), Introduction to Islamic Economics (2015), and Intermediate Islamic Finance