Book Review: Thirty Years of Islamic Banking: History, Performance and Prospects

Thirty years ago, Islamic banking was unheard of. It was considered as, mentioned by the authors, as wishful thinking (p.ix). It is only in the early 1970s, and especially after the launch of the First International Conference on Islamic Economics organized by King Abdul Aziz University in Makkah, Saudi Arabia and the establishment of the first commercial Islamic Bank, Dubai Islamic Bank (DIB) in the United Arab Emirates followed by the establishment of the international Islamic Development Bank (IDB) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and the many private and semi-private commercial Islamic banks that were established after that in Egypt, Sudan, Kuwait, Bahrain, etc. that Islamic banking established itself not only as a feasible and viable alternative of financial intermediation but also as an efficient and productive way of undertaking financial intermediation between surplus and deficit economic units.