Islamic Microfinance: Moving Beyond Financial Inclusion

The current situation of high unemployment and the widening whole of the disadvantages people in Muslims countries have spot light the need of proper access to the microfinance Currently poor and low income people in Muslim countries has little access to either conventional or Islamic microfinance. This article is an attempt to investigate to what extend Islamic microfinance can best help in alleviating poverty in Muslim communities. The results showed that the conventional microfinance concentrates on the low-income group and thus financial and socially excluded the destitute people from microcredit and other related activities such as saving and skills improvement. Further more the resluts indictes that Islamic microfinance is moving beyond conventional counterpart to provide effective social and financial inclusion simultaneously through its Islamic social tools such as Sadaqah, waqf and Zakah, that to be given directly to the extremely poor in cash or in kind to satisfy their basic needs before granting them microcredit. These results might give good an implication to those who provide microfiance in these countries to improve the social and fiancial inclusions of the disadavantages people by adopting Islamic microcredit.