Abstract
About 1.2 billion people around the globe live in extreme poverty and 870 million
go to bed hungry every night. The ILO estimates that almost 202 million people
were unemployed last year, an increase of five million over 2012.1
In this perspective a lot of thinking is going on to find practical solutions for the problem of widespread poverty. The idea of microfinance has received a lot of attention in the economic literature. Naturally, the Muslim economists also got interested in the idea as the Islamic laws of zakāh and waqf provided a lot of scope for adapting the concept in the Islamic framework. Despite its popularity in the literature, microfinance is available to merely 100 million people around the globe, out of which only a minority is Muslims. A vast majority of the Muslim poor do not avail of the conventional microfinance as it involves dealing in interest. That has diverted attention of the Muslim societies and Islamic financial institutions to find ways and improving their lot through religiously acceptable means of finance. That gave birth to the idea of Islamic microfinance.
go to bed hungry every night. The ILO estimates that almost 202 million people
were unemployed last year, an increase of five million over 2012.1
In this perspective a lot of thinking is going on to find practical solutions for the problem of widespread poverty. The idea of microfinance has received a lot of attention in the economic literature. Naturally, the Muslim economists also got interested in the idea as the Islamic laws of zakāh and waqf provided a lot of scope for adapting the concept in the Islamic framework. Despite its popularity in the literature, microfinance is available to merely 100 million people around the globe, out of which only a minority is Muslims. A vast majority of the Muslim poor do not avail of the conventional microfinance as it involves dealing in interest. That has diverted attention of the Muslim societies and Islamic financial institutions to find ways and improving their lot through religiously acceptable means of finance. That gave birth to the idea of Islamic microfinance.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Islamic Economic Studies |
| Publication status | Published - 2014 |
| Externally published | Yes |