All times are good times said a wise man once.  Life is a cycle of birth and death, decay and renewal. Even what we think to be the worst of times may well be the harbinger of and lay the groundwork for the best of times. The one thing that keeps us going is hope. Hope Springs Eternal in the Human Breast and where there is hope there is life.

It is with this message of hope that we present to you our readers a revived and renewed Islamic Finance Today Digital Magazine, coming at a time of global economic downturn in the midst of the COVID pandemic. You may wonder at the timing of the release of this third phase of IFT following on the heels of the print version begun in 2006 and the online version started in 2015, but this is the message we want to give- We  are here to stay through thick and thin, because this is what Islamic Finance is all about!

If there’s one thing that the crisis revealed as it unfolded, it is the utter failure of the capitalist system based on human greed. Did not we see how the West responded to the pandemic. Italy was abandoned to the wolves, so to say, by the rest of Europe and the bulwark of capitalist commercialism, the US could simply not handle the crisis because its entire system was only based on money making from its healthcare to other agencies. If there’s one thing the pandemic proved- it was that  unbridled capitalism had utterly failed humanity.

It is in such trying times that we realise more than ever the value of the Islamic scheme of things from its welfare system based on alms tax and charity to its time-tested financial system based on the principles of mutual help and profit and loss sharing.  This is a system that is neither fickle nor faithless and certainly not one that will abandon Rome to the wolves. Why, because this system is a divinely given one with its roots firmly on the ground. It gives no room for speculation and profiteering at the expense of others by way of usury and other unethical means. And it is here to stay because there will always be a need for it, come what may

One bug has already hit the world and hit it hard, and there’s no need to pass the bigger bug which is the bug of hopelessness and despair. Economic downturns and depressions after all have a lot to do with human mentalities just as much as it has to do with the conventional banking system.  So here’s to hope and to Islamic Finance to show the way out of these seemingly dark times.

Yes there’s light at the end of the tunnel. let’s move towards it!

Asiff Hussein

Editor-in-Chief

Islamic Finance Today