Glossary
Shariah board
The panel of scholars inside a bank that decides whether its products are religiously acceptable.
هيئة الرقابة الشرعيةhay'at al-riqābah al-shar'iyyah
A Shariah supervisory board reviews a bank's products, contracts and practices and certifies them as compliant. Its approval is why two banks can sell structurally different cards and both call them Islamic. The important thing for a consumer is that a board's approval binds that bank, not the whole field: Absa's Shariah Supervisory Committee reaches a conclusion on conventional card use that the OIC Fiqh Academy explicitly rejects. Reading the board's actual pronouncement, rather than the marketing line that reports it, is the only way to know what was approved.
Related terms
FatwaA scholar's or council's formal answer to a religious question.ISSCInternal Shariah Supervision Committee: the in-house scholar panel required at Islamic banks in some countries, notably the UAE.SACShariah Advisory Council: Malaysia's national body whose rulings on Islamic finance bind the industry and are a reference for the courts.AAOIFIThe Bahrain-based body that writes the standards most Islamic banks are measured against.
Sources
- AAOIFI Shariah Standard No. (29); IIFA resolution on the role of Shariah supervision in Islamic banking, 19th session, 2009, https://iifa-aifi.org/en/32982.html