If You Don’t Trust Judges, Let the Scholars Decide: the Primacy of the Malaysian Shariah Advisory Council on Islamic Finance

Year 2017, Volume: 3 Issue: 2, 105 - 112, 27.12.2017

Farid Sufian Shuaib

Abstract

Malaysia adopts the principle of
separation of powers where the function of the legislature is to enact laws,
the executive to govern in accordance with the law and the court to decide
disputes and to apply the law. It is an aberration when the law provides that a
court of law has to revert to a body of scholars in determining what the law in
deciding disputes between parties is. However, this occurs in Malaysia in the
area of Islamic finance where the law establishes a Shariah Advisory Council
consisting of scholar of Islamic finance under the auspices of the Malaysian
Central Bank. The decision of the Shariah Advisory Council is final and binding
upon any arbitration bodies and courts. This paper adopts a doctrinal analysis
approach in examining this issue from the perspective of the constitution and
the legal system, and seeks to reconcile this aberration with the reality of
the practice of law and the practice of Islamic finance in Malaysia. The paper
then examines alternative to this mechanism. 

Keywords

Separation of powers, Islamic finance, constitution

References

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