JEDDAH: The best way to overcome unemployment in the Muslim World is in the application of Islamic economics and Zakat, Saleh Bin Abdullah Kamel, the head of the Council of Saudi Chambers of Commerce, and an expert in Islamic finance, said Tuesday. Sheikh Kamel stressed in a speech during the first session of the last day of the Jeddah Economic Forum 2011 that the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency should expedite setting up Shariah supervisory boards to regulate the work of banks. Participating in the session “The Future of Islamic Finance in the 21st Century,” Sheikh Kamel explained that the legitimacy of the standard is applied in different countries such as Sudan and Malaysia. “We demand to have that in Saudi Arabia under the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency,” he said. According to Kamel, modern Islamic finance should be added to the school curricula and it should be a cornerstone of business activity. “Had we applied Islamic finance in our work, the world's financial crisis would not have taken place,” he said. Kamel noted that there are specialized Islamic banks in different countries, but not in the Kingdom. “Banks in the Kingdom deal on the basis of Islamic law, therefore they do not see the importance of establishing specialized banks as long as the current banks are applying the same rules,” he said. He expects that the new Saudi Islamic banks will be launched this year. There should be a body for classification of Shariah in the market, Kamel said, and it should be announced to the public.
