A Book Review on Ṣukūk: Principles and Practices Beebee Salma Sairally & Marjan Abdullah International Shariah Research Academy for Islamic Finance (ISRA), 1st Edition, 2018

Abstract

Ṣukūk is as essential a mechanism for developing the Islamic finance industry as the industry itself. It provides the opportunity to apply Sharī’ah principles in a modern outfit. The complex nature of Ṣukūk, beginning with the underwriting stage to the dissolution, requires a dynamic, but due diligent process. As such, selecting it alone for an in-depth publication is a momentum contribution to the existing literature. Ṣukūk: Principles and Practices has been a unique contribution to the overall development of the Islamic finance industry. Prior to its publication, the subject matter of Ṣukūk was usually scattered throughout a book chapter, a textbook or journal article on Islamic economics, finance, banking and capital markets. This never constituted a satisfactory material to quench the reader's thirst to the point of saturation. Nevertheless, this book has done a remarkable job of capturing all aspects of Ṣukūk and carefully summarizes its characteristics, scopes, types and classifications, structures, and underlying Sharī’ah contracts. The book digs deep to trace the origin and evolutionary emergence of Ṣukūk experience throughout history and connects it to current practice in different jurisdictions. As such, Sharīʿah rulings and standards, fatwa resolutions, legal, regulatory and tax frameworks have been carefully discussed in a step-by-step process through its five major parts and precisely fourteen chapters. Finally, the book explains the emerging issues and future direction of Ṣukūk practices. In spite of its comprehensiveness the book, like any other human work, needs evaluation and assessment to pinpoint to its strengths and limitations  for the purpose of refining and improvement in future editions. This is what this review tries to accomplish.