Maqasid: Invigorating Islamic Banking and Finance

By Jasmin Omercic

Foundational problems, practical challenges and consequences of mainstream economics, banking and finance are more apparent in contemporary times. The centuries long pursuit for profit and utility maximization, marginal cost and benefit analysis, Pareto efficiency and steady path convergence measurements among macro-economists, micro-economists, wealth and asset managers and the corporate world have generally pushed humankind to the edges of existence. There is hardly a day without a natural disaster whether it be a wildfire, land erosions, earthquakes, floods, typhoons and so on.

Life on Earth is unbalanced, yet the banking and finance world, in addition to other corporate players, perpetuate practices that caused it all. Efforts to curb them are evident in the trendy discourse on sustainable development goals (SDGs), or environmental, social and governance (ESG), and Shariah-compliant screenings. Apparently, there are alternative initiatives to mitigate disruptive globalization and climate shifts in the Earth’s ecosystem. Read more>>