Harmonization of IBF Industry Through Sharia Arbitration and Mediation

The heated discussion of harmonization has been conferred high priority in Islamic banking and finance industry recently. This occasioned to bounteous debates among scholars concerning how to resolve the impair variance of opinions among Shariah scholars of diverse schools of thoughts (Mazahib). This miscellany eventually augment the confusion among the Islamic banking and financial circle and its market participants regarding the acceptability of specific features of Islamic financial contracts and operations. Incontrovertibly, this has hampered the progress of Islamic financial institutions due to the unharmonized Islamic financial contracts. In addition, the application of non-Islamic laws such as the English common law or the conventional law to resolve disputes in Islamic banking is a big challenge. In line with this, the present paper therefore mainly focuses on discussion of harmonization in Islamic banking and finance industry. As such, the paper attempts to present an overview on harmonization of Shariah accepted guidelines with respect to IBF's sales contracts. This paper is expected to make significant contributions towards the development of the industry in the future.