Islamic Finance Research paper

Islamic Finance is a financial system that doesn’t work like other conventional banking systems. It follows the Islamic law, Shariah, which doesn’t allow certain aspects of a normal banking system such as usury and speculation. There are some main principles to be followed in Islamic banking. First of all, it prohibits interest, or Riba. Riba is forbidden in Islam, and therefore Islamic banking system adopts the principle of profit and loss sharing. It also prohibits uncertainty, gambling, and prohibits certain products and industries such as alcohol and tobacco. Islamic Finance needs to be in accordance with the Shariah. All products and contracts follow Islamic principles that conventional financial systems do not, such as interest and risk sharing, and uncertainty. Conventional financial systems have never worked this way and it worked for them for many years until they were hit by the financial crisis. The crisis had a minimal impact on the Islamic financial systems because they did not comply with all the factors that created the crisis in the first place. There were 3 main factors in the creation of the financial crises. First, subprime loans, which was lending to certain people who did not have a good credit history and were bound to default. The banks than charged them with higher rates that increased their risk of defaulting. Secondly, there was securitization, which was creating securities from un-liquid assets. This process is used by banks to create securities from loans and other income producing assets, and then these securities are sold to investors. Finally, it was the credit default swaps that increased the effect of the crisis. There would be many different people having an insurance on the same house (for example both the lender and the borrower), which makes it that insurance companies at one point would have to pay more than the amount of just the house. In the case of the crisis, we can say that the Islamic banking systems would have

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