Contemporary Islamic Finance: Innovations, Applications and Best Practices

CHAPTER 6

Juristic Disagreement

The Collective Fatwā Against Islamic Banking in Pakistan

SHOAIB A. GHIAS

J.D., Ph.D. candidateUniversity of California, Berkeley, School of Law

INTRODUCTION

Over the past two decades, several Islamic financial institutions have been established across the world. Many of these institutions are under the sharī supervision of Muftī Muammad Taqī Uthmānī (b. 1943), who is considered the architect of modern Islamic banking and finance.¹ Uthmānī is a anafī jurist (muftī), former scholar-judge of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, and the vice president of Dār al-Ulūm, Karachi (est. 1951)—the most prominent Deobandi seminary in Pakistan.² He is often called the muftī-i aam ...