Waqf Fund hosts 12th Sharia Scholar session

Manama, Mar. 25 (BNA): The Waqf Fund, a Bahrain-based special fund to support Islamic finance training, education and research, has hosted its twelfth Sharia Scholar session with Shaikh Esam Ishaq, a leading Sharia scholar. Shaikh Esam presented innovative ways for Islamic banks to hedge foreign exchange risk. This was followed by an interactive session during which the Sharia Officers and Internal Sharia Auditors of Islamic banks posed questions and offered their comments. The first suggestion was related to swap of financing facilities in foreign currencies other than US dollar. Shaikh Esam said there should be a third party monitoring the swap transaction and acting as the match-maker between banks. Another suggestion was to hedge foreign currencies for overnight transactions either by establishing a fund on Mudaraba basis or an exchange rate protection scheme based on Takaful along the lines of Sharia compliant deposit protection schemes. The Waqf Fund has been arranging Sharia scholar sessions since 2013, providing an opportunity to the younger scholars to interact with prominent Sharia scholars and learn from their experience. The Waqf Fund was established in 2006 by the Central Bank of Bahrain and a number of financial institutions in Bahrain with the objective to build capacity and develop human resources.