The article “The Objective of Islamic Economic and Islamic Banking in Light of Maqasid al-

Shariah: A Critical Review” was written by Mustafa Omar Mohammad and Syahidawati Shahwan.
The first author is one of the lecturers in Department of Economics under Kulliyyah of Economics
and Management Sciences (KENMS) in International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) while
the corresponding author is a lecture of Faculty of Economics and Muamalat (FEM) in Universiti
Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM). This article has been published in Middle-East Journal of Scientific
Research Issue 13 under the Research in Contemporary Islamic Finance and Wealth Management in
2013. This 10 pages article is located in page 75 until 84 of the journal.
This article critically examines the literature on the objective of both Islamic economic and
Islamic banking and finance by highlighting the Maqasid al-Shariah as the benchmark in discussing
the differences and relations between both fields. The assumption made was that the objective of
Islamic economics is supposed to guide the objective of Islamic banking and finance. However, the
authors found that there is a widening gap between the objectives of these two fields. This is based
on the survey done by the authors in the literature of the subject matter.
In this article, the authors have divided the objective of Islamic economics into two
philosophical and operational objective based on review of literature done. The philosophical-based
objectives are those objectives which relate to the inner dimension of Islamic economic in general
and drive towards its infinite goals which is to achieve al-Falah while the operational objective is
the objectives that are measureable, testable outcomes and directly relate to human worldly
activities such as economic-based objective, social-based objective, justice-based objective, self-
based (inner-self) objective, harm elimination objective and state participation objective.
Meanwhile, the objective of Islamic banks particularly its vision, mission objective (VMO) gives a
massive attention to the institution’s performance in providing services.
Other than that, based on the observation made, the authors found that Islamic banking is
described as the financial institutions that established to promote Islamic economics. The final
conclusion made by the authors is that Maqasid al-Shariah elements that including the protection of
religion, life, mind, wealth and dignity are fully observed in the objectives of Islamic economics
and Islamic banking and finance. The authors also emphasized on the importance of highlighting all
the elements of Maqasid al-Shariah when dealing with the directions of Islamic economics and
Islamic banking. In addition, the authors suggested that the future research to further enhance this
paper and promote other dimensions of Islamic economic and Islamic banking since the fast moving
of Islamic banking requires a very strong foundation to ensure its direction is within the God-based
track and does not ruin its holistic function.
 The study done in this article is very useful as it contained an important point to note by the
researcher as well as students. This article can be used by researcher as a base article to study in
depth on the subject matters. Other than that, emphasis on Maqasid al-Shariah also can be study in
details for the researcher or the practitioner who involves in establishing the vision, mission and
objectives of the financial institution. Hence, the financial institutions would not only moves in the
direction of profit orientation but also need to growth as a social-based entity as well in line with the
philosophical and operational objective of Islamic economic as a whole.
Furthermore, to the layman who wishes to understand the objective of Islamic economic and
Islamic banking, this article will give a useful and helpful information as it provides a clear
explanation and quotes from various references. However, in term of the language used by the
authors, layman may face some problem if they did not have any knowledge on how Islamic
economic and Islamic banking functioned in the society. At least, they need to have a good
command in English and basic understanding of economics in order for them to have a clear picture
on the issue pointed out by the author in this article.