The Art of RF (Riba-Free) Islamic Banking and Finance: Tools and Techniques for Community-Based Banking, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 14 RF Capital Markets Developing the RF Capital Market Investment Products

The sophisticated and highly diversified capital markets that have been developed and systemized over the past century are riba-based. This chapter is not intended to be a comprehensive study of the global capital markets, the way they operate, their regulations and their systems. It is hoped that this chapter will create an interest in some of the readers to study these markets by researching the vast body of literature available in specialized books and by reviewing the vast information available in many books and research papers available in abundance on the Web.

THE CHALLENGE OF FINANCING NEW BUSINESSES AND GROWING EXISTING BUSINESS

One of the important challenges faced by entrepreneurs and businesspeople is how to raise capital in order to finance their new business start-up and/or to attract new capital investments to help in the growth of existing successful businesses. As explained earlier in the book, the real revolution that was brought to the commercial and business world by Islam and systemized by the Prophet Muhammad (s) was to develop riba-free (RF) disciplines and solutions to the problem of: how to finance a business in an RF way.

Businesspeople and corporations continually need fresh capital not because they are needy and poor but because they want to finance the growth of their existing business or the financing of a new business venture. When the Prophet (s) was commissioned, ...