SHOCKING (BUT TRUE) STATISTICS TO THINK ABOUT.....

I was reading an article from The Forbes.com titled The Enforcers, and was shocked and bewildered to learn of the following statistics :

· Currently, there are only 20 men that act as the gatekeepers of the Islamic finance realm

· There are no more than 260 scholars worldwide that have the necessary knowledge in Islamic finance

Islam has overtaken Roman Catholicism to become the world's largest single religious denomination, the figures for 2006 showed that Catholics accounted for 17.4 % of the world population while Muslims accounted for 19.2 % (figures obtained from United Nations). The Vatican puts the number of Catholics in the world at 1.13 billion people, while the figure for Muslims is estimated at around 1.3 billion.

Look at the numbers – what it means is that there is 1 Islamic finance scholar for every 5 million population worldwide. What happened? What went wrong?

Islamic banking and finance is a very lucrative business and yet only 260 scholars are well versed in the field. Malaysia has done a very good job by coming up with INCEIF (International Centre for Education of Islamic Finance) – another brainchild of Bank Negara Malaysia They are producing CIFP graduates and their Master and Doctorate degrees in Islamic Finance are still in the infancy stage but they are making progress. What about the other Islamic nations?

Islam is the religion which was given to Adam, the first man and the first prophet of Allah, and it was the religion of all the prophets sent by Allah to mankind. The name of God's religion lslam was not decided upon by later generations of man. It was chosen by Allah Himself and clearly mentioned in His final revelation to man. In the final book of divine revelation, the Qur'aan, Allah states the following:

"This day have I perfected your religion for you, completed My favour upon you, and have chosen for you Islam as your religion". (Surah Al-Maa'idah 5:3)

"If anyone desires a religion other than Islam (submission to Allah (God) never will It be accepted of Him" (Surah Aal'imraan 3:85)

"Abraham was not a Jew nor Christian; but an upright Muslim." (Surah Aal'imraan 3:67)

Think about it – think really, really hard. If the Muslims don’t help ourselves, who else will do it for us?