islamic economic renaissance 405help promote the sense of Islamisation in the mind of the users of
the banks’ services either as depositors or as users of finance.
There may be a need in the twenty first century for Islamic banks
to be seen diverting away from rates that are more associated with
Western banking systems than with the Islamic spirit of the enter-
prise in the profit and loss sharing principle. Further studies may be
needed to explore the possibility of using indices such as a profit
index to be applied flexibly and dynamically with changes in eco-
nomics conditions and modes of financing.
Will Islamic economics survive the years to come? A variety of
answers to a question of this sort may emerge depending upon who
is in the discussants panel. No unified answer may be reached, or even
expected, as the diversity of views on the subject seems observable
and the disparity of opinions appears notable. The answer will depend
probably on a number of conditions: (a) the degree of adherence to
Islamic norms and ideals, (b) the politically strong Islamic state, (c) the
lack of hostility from the political machinery to Islam internally, through
national governments, and externally, through international pressure,
and (d) the adaptability of Islam to new changes in society techno-
logically and otherwise.
(a) The degree of adherence to Islamic norms and ideals. Economic
systems and philosophies, like any other systems and philosophies,
thrive on people’s belief in them and this is particularly the case
when these systems are based on ethical values and founded heav-
ily on moral values and religious norms. The departure from these
values would result in less manifestation of the systems relying on
them and feeble application of their ideas. For the Islamic economic
system to survive, let alone thrive, it would need the Muslims’ sup-
port taking the form of adhering to Islamic norms in their economic
behaviour. In a competitive environment where both banking sys-
tems, Islamic and Western, are allowed to operate Islamic banks can
only survive, and thrive, if they are given a high position in the cus-
tomers’ scale of preference as both investors and users of funds. The
level of priority given in the scale of preference will depend on a
range of factors, the adherence to Islamic norms and ideals being
the most prominent. To put it briefly, there will be no Islamic bank-
ing in particular or Islamic economics in general, without having
strong Islamic practice in society, financially and economically. And