RT Article
T1 The Birth of the Islamic Investor: Shareholding, Modern Islamic Law, and the Rise of Islamic Finance
JF Islamic law and society
VO 29
IS 3
SP 280
OP 318
A1 Elhoudaiby, Ibrahim
LA English
PB Brill
YR 2022
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1813764190
AB What is Islamic about Islamic finance? How does the industry’s Islamicity compare to the notions of trade and commerce in classical sharīʿa? In this essay, I explore the genealogy of Islamic finance by scrutinizing twentieth-century fatwās on share certificates. I argue that these fatwās gave rise to shareholding as a novel property relation, one that severs the shareholder’s non-financial interest in the company’s property. Twentieth-century muftīs unanimously accepted the legitimacy of shareholding, which, in turn, contributed to the rise of the Islamic investor: a profit-maximizing, socially-disinterested homo economicus whose ethical conduct is validated in reference to modern Islamic law. The unanimous acceptance of shareholding and the investor contributed to the consolidation of the central institutions of Islamic finance: Islamic banks and joint-stock companies. It also contributed to the thinning of Islamicity. Whereas the classical sharīʿa discourse produced partnerships as, at once, social and economic entities, fatwās on Islamic financial instruments reduce Islamicity to economic considerations and a set of maneuverable protocols.
K1 modern Islamic law
K1 Corporations
K1 Debt
K1 joint-stock companies
K1 Investor
K1 shareholding
K1 Islamic Finance
DO 10.1163/15685195-bja10022