The Shari’ah Board of the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Institutions (AAOIFI)- a body consisting of 20 Shari’ah scholars from 15 countries around the world, and from all schools of Islamic law- its meeting no. 49 over a span of three days from 21 to 23 September 2017, in the Kingdom of Bahrain. The meeting discussed several issues and accordingly made a number of key resolutions in this regard, including:

• Approval of the exposure draft on “Sale of Debt” (Bay’ al-Dain): it is considered amongst the most important, and the most divaricated, Shari’ah standards, and has connections to a wide array of Islamic finance products and contracts.



• The Shari’ah Board directed AAOIFI’s General Secretariat to publicly publish the exposure draft for at least one month in order to seek opinions, feedback, and suggestions from the public in addition to the convention of public hearings to seek opinions from Fuqaha (jurists) and experts in areas of banking, legal practice, advisory, and Islamic financial institutions, and particularly members of Shari’ah Supervisory Boards and staff members of Shari’ah auditing and supervision functions for the purpose of ensuring a profound and inclusive exposure draft that covers practical aspects and newly emerging matters faced by the industry’s practitioners. Then the expert feedback received via email and at public hearings will be presented to, and discussed by, the Shari’ah Board in its meeting no. 50 which convenes in mid-November 2017.



• The issuance of exposure draft on “Sale of Debt” constitutes a part of the ambitious plan adopted by AAOIFI for development and review of Shari’ah standards and reflected in the elaborate professional process (the due process) for standards development and review. A consultant had conducted a detailed study on the topic as commissioned by the Shari’ah Board. Then the Jeddah Committee for Shari’ah Standards held a series of extensive meetings to discuss and deliberate on the exposure draft and relevant Shari’ah issues and modern applications. The exposure draft was then subjected to a detailed study by the Shari’ah Board over the course of two consecutive meetings.
• The Board also looked over a number of reports prepared by AAOIFI’s General Secretariat regarding the technical efforts exerted in areas of Shari’ah standards development and meetings of Shari’ah Board’s committees, and the progress being made with respect to translations of Shari’ah standards to several world languages and corresponding launching ceremonies in different parts of the world. The Shari’ah Board congratulated AAOIFI on and praised the completion of translation projects on French and Russian, and lauded the progressive plans relating to other translation projects, some of which are at an advanced stages of completion including Urdu and Turkish, or those that have been recently phased in such as Chinese, in addition to other projects currently underway in terms of preparation and initiation such as Spanish and German.
• Moreover, the Shari’ah Board also commended the diligent efforts and tireless stance taken up by the General Secretariat on the front of strategy transformation including revisiting and reforming all its activities and areas of work, and the process undertaken to probe the industry’s opinions based on a methodological approach. This also included a presentation of the outcomes of a survey targeting members of Central Shari’ah Boards and Supervisory Shari’ah Boards and their secretariats and so on, with regard to the development of Shari’ah standards and the modus operandi of the Shari’ah Board and its various committees.

In this respect, AAOIFI would like to invite all experts and professionals to submit their comments and views on Shari’ah standard No. 59 regarding “Sale of Debt” not later than 5 November 2017 via its email: sharia@aaoifi.com . The exposure draft is available to download by Clicking Here.