Beginning from 2009, it has continued to command substantially between 50 per cent and 60 per cent of outstanding global sukuk originated from the country – more than those from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

In global equity market and fund management, Malaysia has also been ranked first where syariah-compliant products now make up around 87 per cent of all securities listed on Bursa Malaysia.

“It all started with the Islamic Banking Act 1983. The progress that we see today was triggered from that act,” related CIMB Islamic Bank Bhd’s chief executive officer Badlisyah Abdul Ghani to The Borneo Post.

Prior to Islamic finance, he observed that the nation was regarded as a ‘non-entity’ in the global financial market.

“Islamic finance changed that. Malaysia is now officially recognised as the premier hub for the industry. More significantly, it is all ‘inhouse’; meaning that beginning in 1983, all the infrastructure, the regulatory framework, governance and mechanism are wholly laid out by Malaysians.

“So comprehensive is our framework that what we have here does not exist elsewhere. Under the regulations by Bank Negara, the Securities Commission, Bursa Malaysia and Labuan Financial Services Authority, Malaysia has a specific legislation and provision for each of its financial segments,” explained Badlisyah.

For Syarikat Takaful Malaysia Bhd’s managing director Datuk Mohamed Hassan Kamil, the core of Islamic finance remained at its openness and transparency.

“It is a financial avenue for all – Muslims and non-Muslims alike. The ‘heart’ of Islamic finance concept still underline the transparency aspect across its mechanisms, structure right down to products. The obvious provisos are that there must be no transaction done that involves or originates from ‘haram’ (unlawful) businesses like winery or gambling.

“The rest are applicable, so long they stay within the syariah principles,” he told The Borneo Post in a recent telephone interview.

With a global industrial value estimated at around US$1 trillion (approximately RM3.06 trillion), Malaysia could easily capitalise upon such strength with its expertise and offerings. However, one should not overlook that the industry was once ‘shaken’ last year due to the Dubai debt standstill – indicating that as with the conventional system, the Islamic financial mechanism was not immune to challenges.

Malaysia was also ‘attacked’ by some Islamic countries some time ago when it approved and implemented the ‘bai bithaman ajil’ (deferred payment) concept in its financing which according to Badlisyah, was unnecessarily ‘fuelled’ by misconceptions.

“Malaysia was condemned at the time for practising a concept that was deemed haram due to a confusion in understanding the syariah. Remember that the bai bithaman ajil concept has existed for the past 1,400 years since the Prophet Muhammad’s time.

“How can the concept be condemned haram if it had been practised and advocated by Muhammad and followers? This is the outcome of not having syariah knowledge,” he stressed.

To this, Badlisyah pointed out that it was vital for people to learn and understand syariah and its application into Islamic finance.

“They – financial practitioners and the public alike – cannot impose their personal views on how syariah works, since the system is already standardised across the globe. It should be the other way around.

“It is important that we should get rid of such confusion, as confusion would lead to uncertainty and further on, to speculation. Remember, these two aspects – known as ‘gharar’ – are stately prohibited in Islamic finance.”

Another major challenge for the sector was be the insufficient pool of talents, to which Mohamed Hassan referred to as a ‘major impediment’.

“Together with lack of talent development, there’s a ‘chronic’ talent shortage at the moment. However, I believe that this is a temporary impediment. As the talents continue to grow and develop over the next five to 10 years, we should be able to overcome the setback.

“Also, there are several institutions in Malaysia, which have been developed under Bank Negara, that develop human talents in Islamic finance. So, there are trainings undergoing today that deal with fresh graduates as well as experienced practitioners, slated for them to better understand the industry,” he listed out.

In a similar sentiment, Badlisyah further said, “you talk about human talent, what we do in Islamic finance is, basically, finance. So in order to be better at what we do now, people who know finance should also know syariah. Unfortunately, these are the very talents that we are critically lacking in the market.”

On the bright side, Badlisyah disclosed that it was a ‘good problem to have’.

“It further shows that the industry is growing really fast, resulting in we having to catch up in terms of human talents. Just as Malaysia has a dual banking system; conventional and Islamic, we also need players and practitioners who have financial knowledge, at the same time also knowing how to go about doing it within the ambit of syariah.

“Efforts are being done by the authorities and our very own CIMB Islamic Bank. Upon achieving this, only then we can hold true to our status as the global Islamic financial oasis,” he said.

source : borneo post

TTI sales and marketing manager Nor Sabihah Fidri said everyday about 400 tourists visited the park to experience the joy of riding in several boats that had been made available for them at the park.

“We receive visitors to go for between seven and eight trips a day along the river,” she told reporters in conjunction with a quiz programme orgnaised by the TTI-Terenganu FM radio service here Saturday.

The quiz contest held in collaboration with the radio station started on Dec 1 last year and will end on Jan 31.

It touches on TTI the radio station and tourism in Terengganu.

Malaysia’s universities have become prime recruiting grounds for Islamic militants looking for youngsters to draw into terrorist networks, security experts warn.

Unlike neighbouring Indonesia and Thailand, the moderate Muslim-majority nation has remained largely free of terror attacks but there are fears that lax admission policies have created a haven for jihadists.

A string of arrests and detentions this year have highlighted the growing presence of radicals using Malaysia as a base to sign up supporters and plan attacks.

“The terror threat to Malaysia is very real in terms of terrorists who come in as students,” Zamihan Mat Zin, deputy head of the Malaysian Islamic Training Centre, told AFP.

“They are under the radar so they can recruit and create terrorists in our midst,” said Zamihan, who is among a group of Muslim scholars engaged by the government to rehabilitate terror suspects in custody.

In June, authorities deported 45-year-old Al-Qaeda-linked Syrian scholar Aiman Al Dakak along with eight other foreigners from Syria, Yemen, Nigeria and Jordan, most of them students.

Al Dakak gave lectures to Malaysian and foreign students at his Kuala Lumpur home, allegedly indoctrinating them with jihadist ideology and urging them to carry out bombings on places of worship in the multi-ethnic nation.

The following month, engineer Mohamad Fadzullah was detained under internal security laws for trying to recruit students at Malaysia’s national university and technical institutes for the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) extremist group.

Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said after the deportations that the phenomenon was an “unhealthy trend which can affect national security”.

He said foreign militants were using Malaysia as a base to carry out financial transactions, share information and sign up new followers.

“Despite the arrests, we believe there are still many who are here now and this process is continuing,” said Zamihan, who was given permission to interview the nine deported terror suspects.

“Some of these Al-Qaeda operatives who are caught overseas but not prosecuted because of a lack of evidence or a good lawyer, they are able to escape so they then come to Malaysia to study to do a Masters or PhD, but at the same time they are busy recruiting undergraduates.”

“Once they have their recruits, whether local or foreigners studying here, they plan regional attacks. Many of them have confessed this,” he said.

Kamarulnizam Abdullah, who heads national security studies at the National University of Malaysia, says better screening is needed.

“Our system is very lax and we just accept whoever without thinking of consequences,” he said.

Malaysia has been effective in traditional counter-terrorism, but the threat at educational institutions tends to be forgotten, he said, adding that high regard for religious teachers from the Middle East meant they had a willing and uncritical audience for their radical brand of Islam.

“The arrests and deportations are a worrying development because it means the threat is still there that such recruitment is going on at universities,” he said.

Zamihan said the nine deported in June were Al-Qaeda operatives who were quietly trying to resurrect JI, a militant Southeast Asian group blamed for a string of major attacks including the 2002 Bali bombings.

“They were recruiting locals or even foreigners studying here to radicalise them and create new terrorists,” he said.

The developments have drawn international concern, with FBI assistant director for international operations Joseph Demarest saying recently that the organisation was deeply concerned over home-grown militancy in the Asian region.

“It is the affiliated groups that we are very concerned about… the smaller group, the individuals that we may not know about, these are the top concerns at least for the FBI,” he said on the sidelines of a regional security conference in Kuala Lumpur.

Sidney Jones, an expert on Indonesian Islamic terror groups, said it was difficult to say how pervasive campus recruitment is, and whether it is part of a regional plot to rebuild JI.

“There are reports of terror recruitment on Malaysian campuses but Malaysian officials are tight-lipped so it is hard to pin down how extensive this is or what their connections are,” she said.

Source :  AFP