Islamic social finance: trends and issues

Introduction. COVID-19 shocks the economic stability worldwide. Governments take action to survive and to recover from the pandemic. Awareness towards alternative finance to recover the national and global economy. Islam has introduced social modes of financing. Research on Islamic social finance has also been performed from various aspects and methods. This study analyses trends, reviews systematically, and provides future direction for research related to Islamic social finance studies. Matherials and Methods. Scopus Indexed articles will be analyzed to achieve the objective of the study. Systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis are implemented to answer the research questions. Results. The results showed that research related on Islamic social finance covers wide variety of topics. Both development of zakat and waqf related discussion has been progressing and the number of research studying these issues are rising. Since the emergence of COVID-19, the study on finding alternative source of financing is increasing. Integration of commercial and social finance could be among the solutions. Therefore, it needs to be studied more to propose new and more innovative models. Conclusion. Future discussion on positioning zakat and waqf as formal national source of financing is still needed. Methods and points of discussion on zakat and waqf in other countries could adopt and imitate those implemented in countries which have been studied frequently such as Malaysia and Indonesia.