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Debt in Islamic finance

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W ith Beyond Debt: Islamic Experiments in Global Finance, Daromir Rudnyckyj has opened a passage to a different world of theory and practice in global finance. This world is the… Click to show full abstract

W ith Beyond Debt: Islamic Experiments in Global Finance, Daromir Rudnyckyj has opened a passage to a different world of theory and practice in global finance. This world is the world of Islamic finance. A financial system which operates according to Islamic law (shariah). As critical scholars continue to criticise the finance of Western capitalism, Islamic finance is both proposing and executing new ways of addressing the turmoil of global finance. Rudnyckyj’s research reminds critical scholars that finance is always two steps ahead, and that this whole time we may have been following the wrong trail. The introduction of the book situates the reader within the post-2008 global financial crisis debates in Kuala Lumpur, the heart of the Islamic finance. There is an overbearing sense of urgency to make the case for Islamic finance as the antidote to the global crisis of debt. This urgency is also accompanied by the author’s frustration. It is difficult to propose a coherent alternative when everything is subject to debate within the walls of Islamic finance. Experts of Islamic finance not only call into question the specificities of devices, but the ontology of Islamic finance itself. In the midst of these economic and religious debates, Rudnyckyj found no single answer to the questions posed inside these walls. Instead of a homogenous narrative of Islamic finance, we are introduced to a rich and multifaceted story that somehow always finds its way back to analogies about halal food. Ultimately, the question the book seeks to ask is ‘how finance might be thought of, and practiced, differently’ (Rudnyckyj 2019, 21). In the depth of dialogue and debates, three central arguments ensue from Rudnyckyj’s field work, which summarise the research findings. First, the period of field work (2010–2015) in Malaysia was one of experiment, debate, and revision. This experimental moment was particularly defined by two foundational binaries of (1) Islamic finance and conventional finance, and (2) equitybased finance and debt-based finance. We later begin to learn that these stark binaries are at the core of the debates in Islamic finance. Second, Islamic finance reforms propose a diagnosis and a way beyond debt. Yet, Rudnyckyi argues, despite the promise of Islamic finance to transcend debt and redesign capitalism, these propositions are often ignored both in mainstream as well as the critical literature on debt. Third, the endeavour to establish Kuala Lumpur as the international hub for Islamic finance, and therefore an Islamic global city, lays bare an alternative and counter-colonial configuration of the geoeconomic network of contemporary capitalism. A configuration that plans to decentre Europe and North

Keywords: islamic finance; finance debt; global finance; finance; debt islamic

Journal Title: City
Year Published: 2019

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