Finance, FinTech, and Crowdfunding in Islam

Our second collaboration with the BIT-AMENA (University of California, Berkeley iTechpreneurship in Asia, Middle East, and North Africa) Center for Building Innovation Economies, this series focuses on how a financial system is comprised of different subsystems—such as the banking system, financial markets, capital markets, insurance, and derivatives—which are underpinned by legal and commercial infrastructure. When compared to the conventional system, the Islamic financial system has two distinct features: first, the prohibition of riba (interest), which eliminates the possibility of debt and of leveraging within the financial system, and second, the promotion of risk-sharing, facilitated through modes of transaction designed for investors to share the risks and rewards of investment on a more equitable basis. As such, the Islamic financial system is based on a banking system that operates without a debt economy, and instead promotes the financing of the real economy. Researchers have argued that an active and vibrant market of securitized assets, which has some resemblance to the conventional asset-based debt market, replaces the debt market and behaves and operates differently. We will subsequently examine the vital role that the stock market plays within a risk-sharing economy.