La crise financière mondiale et la finance islamique: une revue de la litérature[The global financial crisis and Islamic finance: a review of selected literature]

The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) has shaken the theoretical and physical foundations of the international financial system. Notwithstanding the severity of the crisis, Islamic financial institutions have shown a relative resilience that has given more credibility to Islamic finance and drawn more attention to its core principles. This paper reviews the writings of Islamic economists on the GFC. Most of the authors reviewed acknowledged the technical mistakes put forth by many conventional analysts as causes of the crisis. However, Islamic economists established a link between those technical mistakes and the flawed system that creates a fertile ground for their occurrence. They, thus, showed how the adoption of the principles of Islamic finance would have prevented most of those mistakes. The way forward, therefore, for both Islamic and conventional finance is, inter alia, greater reliance on risk sharing to inject more discipline in the system; the establishment of a strong and comprehensive regulatory body to safeguard the resilience of the system and the integration of Zakat, Awqaf and other voluntary institutions into the financial system to cater for the financial needs of the poor.