Four Initiatives Islamic Finance Must Undertake to Keep Itself Relevant in Changing Times

Click here to see Part 1 of 6: Climate of Change — Four Initiatives Islamic Finance Must Undertake

Click here to see Part 2 of 6: Launching a Gold-Based Currency

Click here to see Part 3 of 6: Environmental Shariah Standards

Click here to see Part 4 of 6: Supporting Community-Based Finance

Click here to see Part 5 of 6: Regulating Shariah Standards

Part 6 of 6: The End

A once common problem with explaining environmental degradation to the common man was the abstractness of it: outwardly, everything seemed fine in the 1970s, 1980s, and into the 1990s to the casual observer even though closer inspection revealed otherwise. But by the turn of the 21st century, and especially in the last five years, events are unfolding at a pace that makes environmental problems hard to ignore.

To use examples from Ethica’s own team, lifelong farmers we spoke with once predicted seasons down to the week. Now they have trouble timing harvests to the nearest month. Relatives who once enjoyed basic energy security throughout the year now regularly go days without gas and electricity. Forests we once played in as children have been wiped out forever by palm oil companies, and so on.

Given the inadequacy of the present world response to environmental degradation, it is unlikely that we will avert some of the more major disasters like global heating, which many climatologists already declare an inevitability even if we reduced carbon emissions to zero today. But better late than never. Some things are still very much in our control, and they do bear upon the shape of the world to come: currency, environmental standards, community-based finance, and the Shariah compliance of our institutions, to name just some of those mentioned in this article.

How can Islamic finance make a difference in the sweep of such global events? History is filled with examples of small tipping points making disproportionately large impacts. Though the Islamic finance industry accounts for only a fraction of global transactional volume, the real power of Islamic finance is in being able to galvanize the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims by providing them and their non-Muslim brothers and sisters with real solutions.

Corruption has appeared in the land and sea, for that
men's own hands have earned, that He may let them taste
some part of that which they have done, that haply so
they may return.
The Koran

Download the complete article as a PDF here

Click here to see Part 1 of 6: Climate of Change — Four Initiatives Islamic Finance Must Undertake

Click here to see Part 2 of 6: Launching a Gold-Based Currency

Click here to see Part 3 of 6: Environmental Shariah Standards

Click here to see Part 4 of 6: Supporting Community-Based Finance

Click here to see Part 5 of 6: Regulating Shariah Standards

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