Mainstreaming Islamic Finance: Unveiling the Critical Success and Failure Factor: An Insider and Global Perspective by MOHD DAUD BAKAR

It may suprise you to know that while Islamic finance is a fast growing industry in terms of its growth rate, its base is still small and negligible. Any impressive growth of anything with a small base is nothing to celebrate. Not yet at least. Unfortunately, without looking as its base, many have excitedly believed in the 'miraculous' growth rate of Islamic finance. Thus, we need to occasionally look at both the market share and the base, especially when one of them is relatively insignificant and immaterial. The journey towards mainstreaming Islamic finance will tackle this issue head-on to create awareness (and real dashboard indicators) to start putting the right strategies to face the new realities, instead of celebrating figures and numbers that are artificial and presented in an out-of-proportion and out-of-context fashion. Perception is one thing but if we really want to improve something, we need to deal with facts and numbers.