Overview
The banking and finance sector has witnessed great developments during the past two decades including the appearance of the Islamic finance products that became a strong global alternative and competitor to the traditional investment and finance. This revolution in finance and investment can be evidenced by the presence of hundreds of Islamic financial institutions spread around the world as they are located in more than sixty countries in the Middle East, Southern Asia, Europe, America, Africa and Australia. This can be shown in the studies and reports issued by specific journals, research centers and relevant authorities. According to data from the year 2017, a study published in the peer-reviewed scientific Bait Al-Mashura magazine that the total value of the financial assets worldwide of Islamic finance reaches $2.43 trillion, including 1.72 assets for Islamic banks and banking, and it is expected that the value of assets will rise by 56% to reach almost $3.8 trillion by 2023, of which $2.44 trillion are assets of Islamic banks.
The number of employees and staff at the Islamic institutions reaches 250 thousand employees around the world, more than half of them are located in the Middle East, and 85% of these staff are with traditional commercial banking backgrounds, and so it is necessary to raise the level of qualification of workers and increase their capabilities to find investment opportunities and develop human resources by putting general strategies.
Locally, there are many General Islamic Financial organizations in Palestine, that aims mainly to support the economic and development of the country, and so this program was designed to encourage and enhance the relation between the academic institution and the private sector, especially the Islamic financial organizations.
In other words, this program will work to enhance the relation between the theory and the practice in the financial businesses related to the moral values that Shariaa is the main resource for it, and to transfer the experiment of other countries which work in the Islamic finance to Palestine and the Arab countries. The applied Islamic finance has a great importance to an important segment of society that represents the financial and business sector, and so, this program will provide great job opportunities in the economic sector. From here came the idea of a master’s program in Applied Islamic Finance, as it is the only program specialized in applied Islamic finance in Palestinian universities in the West Bank, this gives Arab American University an advantage over other universities.
