When Pink Floyd were building their wall, their clarion call was: 'we don't need no education', which sits at odds with Islamic finance, which is increasingly becoming more and more about education.
But what is it that the next generation of Islamic bankers is learning at the plethora of institutions offering Islamic finance courses; and will they be able to educate a new, sophisticated, modern generation of Islamic bankers, or just offer a newer version of the old school, suited and then rebooted?
A look through the prospectuses of some of the institutions offering AAOIFI and INCEIF-accredited Islamic finance courses will show that there is no universal syllabus for Islamic finance.
In some instances Islamic finance is taught as 'capitalism, minus Riba, plus Zakat'; in other courses the emphasis seems to be more on the theological, spiritual and esoteric aspects of Islamic finance, where 'Islam' comes first and 'finance' comes second.
The lack of uniformity is something of a double-edged sword: it creates the environment for innovation, encouraging students to 'think outside of the box' and is a valuable academic exercise that acts as an important personal development device, like many other 'academic' as opposed to 'vocational' courses.
However, this lack of uniformity is not good for the industry as a whole. University graduates come out of many of these undergraduate or even postgraduate courses ill-equipped to enter the Islamic finance arena, requiring more vocational training, which of course is an up-front cost to the firms that they want to join, at a time when corporations across the world are tightening their belts - Islamic finance institutions included.
In addition, because these new graduates have not received a universal and standardized Islamic finance education, the spirit of innovation becomes stifled as when confronted by simple transactions, questions of product structuring, or Shari'ah compliance they are unable to complete them, and therefore freeze in the headlights and revert to what had been done before, as opposed to throwing away the thought box and creating something truly innovatory and unique.
It's not really the student's fault. The Islamic Globe makes a point of talking to the industry's fresh-faced, optimistic and enthusiastic graduates and first-jobbers about their experiences in education and on joining the industry. It just seems at the educational level there is a bit of muddled-headedness in what universities and colleges should be teaching students and the academic products - although passionate about developing the industry - don't always arrive with the right tools for the job, even the old heads that have done MBAs.
Dr. Saiful Azhar Rosly, head of INCEIF's banking department explained: "As expected, the teaching of Islamic economics at Malaysian local universities has no uniformity. Students are guinea pigs to passionate academics, including me." Rosly was previously, professor of economics at the International Islamic University Malaysia and director of research at the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research.
It's not really the academics' fault either. They are trying to develop students who can achieve academic success (which is good for the university), not to become fee-earners and product engineers for Islamic banks and Takaful firms.
If one should seek guidance, then the place to look has to be AAOIFI, as global standards setter for the industry and INCEIF, the educational watchdog. However, as seems to be systemic in the industry, there is no joined-up thinking, with its centers, Malaysia and Bahrain both following their own increasingly jingoistic agendas and drifting apart from one another.
As for the peripheries of the industry - the UK, US, Africa and Central Asia - 'education, education, education' is the mantra, but there is still a need for guidance and credibility from the centre.
As reported elsewhere in The Islamic Globe the educational sector is becoming even more crowded with the entry of another Malaysian-government backed institution to the fray (see opposite), The Association for Islamic Finance Advancement, which is trying to win a bigger slice of the educational pie for Malaysia. Moreover, GCC bodies are increasingly forging alliances with western educational institutions to provide Islamic finance training.
All these competitive initiatives have led to education becoming increasingly commoditized, as governments target the sector as a lucrative foreign currency earner. Although The Islamic Globe applauds Malaysia and other Muslim nations for taking education in Islamic finance seriously, the sector does not 'need no thought control' as its students are not just another brick in the wall, but the future of the industry.
© The Islamic Globe 2011
