Mohd Daud Bakar

It may surprise you to know that while Islamic finance is a fast growing industry in terms of its growth rate, its base is still small and negligible. Any impressive growth of anything with a small base is nothing to celebrate. Not yetr at least. Unfortunately, without looking at its base, many have excitedly believed in the 'miraculous' growth rate of Islamic Finance. Thus, we need to occasionally look at both the market share and the base, especially when one of them is relatively insignificant and immaterial. THe journey towards mainstreaming Islamic finance will tackle this issue head-on to create awareness (and real dash board indicators) to start putting the right strategies to face the new realities, instead of celebrating figues and numbers that are artificial and presented in an out-of-propotion and out-of-context fashion. Perception is one thing but if we really want to improve something, we need to deal with facts and numbers.