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97-582: Sukuk ( Arabic : صكوك , romanized :  ṣukūk ; plural of Arabic: صك , romanized:  ṣakk , lit.   'legal instrument, deed, cheque') is the Arabic name for financial certificates , also commonly referred to as " sharia compliant" bonds . Sukuk are defined by the AAOIFI ( Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions ) as " securities of equal denomination representing individual ownership interests in

194-601: A contract or conveyance of rights, obligations or monies done in conformity with the Shariah . The term was used to refer to forms of papers representing financial obligations originating from trade and other commercial activities in the Islamic pre-modern period. According to Camille Paldi, the first sukuk transaction took place in Damascus in its Great Mosque in the 7th century AD. Muslim traders are known to have used

291-459: A tangible asset in the investment. For example, Sukuk securities may have partial ownership of a property built by the investment company (and held in a Special Purpose Vehicle ), so that sukuk holders can collect the property's profit as rent , (which is allowed under Islamic law). Because they represent ownership of real assets and (at least in theory) do not guarantee repayment of initial investment, sukuk resemble equity instruments, but like

388-443: A bond (and unlike equity) regular payments cease upon their expiration. However, most sukuk are "asset-based" rather than "asset-backed"—their assets are not truly owned by their Special Purpose Vehicle , and their holders have recourse to the originator if there is a shortfall in payments. Different types of sukuk are based on different structures of Islamic contracts (Murabaha, Ijara, Istisna, Musharaka, Istithmar, etc.) depending on

485-522: A collection of related dialects that constitute the precursor of Arabic, first emerged during the Iron Age . Previously, the earliest attestation of Old Arabic was thought to be a single 1st century CE inscription in Sabaic script at Qaryat al-Faw , in southern present-day Saudi Arabia. However, this inscription does not participate in several of the key innovations of the Arabic language group, such as

582-549: A committee to restructure $ 650 million Golden Belt 1 sukuk . Standard & Poor's cut the rating of that sukuk "owing to the non-availability of vital information". Another source (Mushtak Parker) claims there "have been a mere three or four" sukuk defaults—East Cameron sukuk in Louisiana (a dispute relating to the profit-sharing arrangement of the instrument); the Investment Dar sukuk (to do with "cash flow problems of

679-552: A contractual debt obligation of the issuer to pay to bondholders, on certain specified dates, interest and principal; a Sukuk is a certificate giving Sukuk holders an undivided beneficial ownership in the underlying assets. Consequently, Sukuk holders are entitled to share in the revenues generated by the Sukuk assets as well as being entitled to share in the proceeds of the realization of the Sukuk assets. The AAOIFI ( Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions ,

776-632: A conventional bond is a promise to repay a loan, sukuk constitute partial ownership in a debt, asset, project, business or investment. The most commonly used sukuk structures replicate the cash flows of conventional bonds. Such structures are listed on exchanges, commonly the Luxembourg Stock Exchange and London Stock Exchange in Europe, and made tradable through conventional organisations like Euroclear or Clearstream . A key technique to achieve capital protection without amounting to

873-435: A corpus of poetic texts, in addition to Qur'an usage and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ʿarabiyya . Arabic spread with the spread of Islam . Following the early Muslim conquests , Arabic gained vocabulary from Middle Persian and Turkish . In the early Abbasid period , many Classical Greek terms entered Arabic through translations carried out at Baghdad's House of Wisdom . By

970-1081: A dialect of Arabic and written in the Latin alphabet . The Balkan languages, including Albanian, Greek , Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian , have also acquired many words of Arabic origin, mainly through direct contact with Ottoman Turkish . Arabic has influenced languages across the globe throughout its history, especially languages where Islam is the predominant religion and in countries that were conquered by Muslims. The most markedly influenced languages are Persian , Turkish , Hindustani ( Hindi and Urdu ), Kashmiri , Kurdish , Bosnian , Kazakh , Bengali , Malay ( Indonesian and Malaysian ), Maldivian , Pashto , Punjabi , Albanian , Armenian , Azerbaijani , Sicilian, Spanish, Greek, Bulgarian, Tagalog , Sindhi , Odia , Hebrew and African languages such as Hausa , Amharic , Tigrinya , Somali , Tamazight , and Swahili . Conversely, Arabic has borrowed some words (mostly nouns) from other languages, including its sister-language Aramaic, Persian, Greek, and Latin and to

1067-653: A document or certificate, which represents the value of an asset. Sharia forbids both the trading of short-term debt instruments except at face value, and the drawing upon the established interbank money markets (both being seen as transactions involve interest and excessive uncertainty ( Gharar )). As a consequence, prior to the development of the sukuk market, the balance sheets of Islamic financial institutions tended to be highly illiquid and lacking in short and medium term investment opportunities for their current assets. Sukuk are structured in several different ways. (The AAOIFI has laid down 14 different types of sukuk.) While

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1164-482: A fixed percentage of the principal, based on interest rates, while guaranteeing the return of investors' principal at maturity. Usmani's estimate that 85% of all Sukuk in issuance were not Shariah-compliant was based on the existence of guaranteed returns and/or repurchase obligations from the issuer—a violation of shariah. Following Usmani's criticisms the global sukuk market shrunk from US$ 50 billion in 2007 to approximately $ 14.9 billion in 2008, although how much of this

1261-411: A general assembly. AAOIFI also has a board of trustees and an accounting and auditing standards board each consisting of fifteen part-time members, a Shari'ah committee consisting of four part-time members, an executive committee, and a secretary-general who is a full-time executive and heads the general secretariat. The objectives of AAOIFI are: AAOIFI carries out these objectives in accordance with

1358-487: A lesser extent and more recently from Turkish, English, French, and Italian. Arabic is spoken by as many as 380 million speakers, both native and non-native, in the Arab world, making it the fifth most spoken language in the world, and the fourth most used language on the internet in terms of users. It also serves as the liturgical language of more than 2 billion Muslims . In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked Arabic

1455-471: A loan is a binding promise to repurchase certain assets; e.g. in the case of Sukuk Al Ijara , by the issuer. In the meantime a rent is being paid, which is often benchmarked to an interest rate ( LIBOR is the most common though its use is criticized by some Sharia Scholars). The most accepted structure, which is tradable, is thereafter the Sukuk Al Ijara . Debt certificates can only be bought before

1552-457: A measuring tool for value and not an asset in itself, it requires that one should not receive income from money (or anything that has the genus of money) alone, as this (simplistically, interest ) is " riba ", and forbidden. From a Sharia perspective, certificates of debt are not tradable except at their par value (although a different view is held by many in Malaysia). While a bond is

1649-690: A millennium before the modern period . Early lexicographers ( لُغَوِيُّون lughawiyyūn ) sought to explain words in the Quran that were unfamiliar or had a particular contextual meaning, and to identify words of non-Arabic origin that appear in the Quran. They gathered shawāhid ( شَوَاهِد 'instances of attested usage') from poetry and the speech of the Arabs—particularly the Bedouin ʾaʿrāb  [ ar ] ( أَعْراب ) who were perceived to speak

1746-576: A need to provide short and medium term instruments so that balance sheets of Islamic financial institutions could be more liquid, the Fiqh academy of the OIC (Organization of Islamic Countries) legitimized the use of sukuk in February 1988. In 1990 one of the first contemporary sukuk—worth RM125 million—were issued by Malaysia Shell MDS Sdn Bhd, on the basis of bai' bithaman ajil . The next major Sukuk Issuances

1843-430: A niche segment with virtually all of the trading done at the institution level. The size of the secondary market remains unknown, though LMC Bahrain states they traded $ 55.5 million of Sukuk in 2007. As of July 2014 sukuk.com listed fifteen sukuk on the secondary market for Gulf Sukuk. Ali Arsalan Tariq states that Islamic finance—including sukuk—is based on a set of several prohibitions: As Shari’ah considers money to be

1940-548: A portfolio of eligible existing or future assets ." The Fiqh academy of the OIC legitimized the use of sukuk in February 1988. Sukuk were developed as an alternative to conventional bonds which are not considered permissible by many Muslims as they pay interest (prohibited or discouraged as Riba , or usury ), and also may finance businesses involved in activities not permitted under Sharia (gambling, alcohol, pork, etc.). Sukuk securities are structured to comply with Sharia by paying profit, not interest—generally by involving

2037-594: A result, many European languages have borrowed words from it. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in European languages (mainly Spanish and to a lesser extent Portuguese , Catalan , and Sicilian ) owing to the proximity of Europe and the long-lasting Arabic cultural and linguistic presence, mainly in Southern Iberia, during the Al-Andalus era. Maltese is a Semitic language developed from

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2134-462: A script derived from ASA attest to a language known as Hasaitic . On the northwestern frontier of Arabia, various languages known to scholars as Thamudic B , Thamudic D, Safaitic , and Hismaic are attested. The last two share important isoglosses with later forms of Arabic, leading scholars to theorize that Safaitic and Hismaic are early forms of Arabic and that they should be considered Old Arabic . Linguists generally believe that "Old Arabic",

2231-470: A single language, despite mutual incomprehensibility among differing spoken versions. From a linguistic standpoint, it is often said that the various spoken varieties of Arabic differ among each other collectively about as much as the Romance languages . This is an apt comparison in a number of ways. The period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for

2328-403: A total worth of $ 700 million—no longer sharia compliant, and offered to exchange the sukuk with a new one which would pay "less than half of the current profit rates and without a conversion feature". The Sukuk were issued in 2013 and due to mature on 30 October 2017. Dana refused to make payments on them, alleging that "changes in Islamic finance over recent years have made the bonds unlawful in

2425-507: A type of Arabic. Cypriot Arabic is recognized as a minority language in Cyprus. The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia , which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. Tawleed is the process of giving a new shade of meaning to an old classical word. For example, al-hatif lexicographically means

2522-507: A variety of regional vernacular Arabic dialects , which are not necessarily mutually intelligible. Classical Arabic is the language found in the Quran , used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate . Classical Arabic is prescriptive, according to the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh ) and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as

2619-476: A wider audience." In the wake of the industrial revolution and European hegemony and colonialism , pioneering Arabic presses, such as the Amiri Press established by Muhammad Ali (1819), dramatically changed the diffusion and consumption of Arabic literature and publications. Rifa'a al-Tahtawi proposed the establishment of Madrasat al-Alsun in 1836 and led a translation campaign that highlighted

2716-737: Is a Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world . The ISO assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic , including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic , which is derived from Classical Arabic . This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā ( اَلعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ "the eloquent Arabic") or simply al-fuṣḥā ( اَلْفُصْحَىٰ ). Arabic

2813-590: Is a minimum level of comprehension between all Arabic dialects, this level can increase or decrease based on geographic proximity: for example, Levantine and Gulf speakers understand each other much better than they do speakers from the Maghreb. The issue of diglossia between spoken and written language is a complicating factor: A single written form, differing sharply from any of the spoken varieties learned natively, unites several sometimes divergent spoken forms. For political reasons, Arabs mostly assert that they all speak

2910-559: Is a sister language rather than their direct ancestor. Arabia had a wide variety of Semitic languages in antiquity. The term "Arab" was initially used to describe those living in the Arabian Peninsula , as perceived by geographers from ancient Greece . In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside the Ancient South Arabian family (e.g. Southern Thamudic) were spoken. It

3007-478: Is believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages (non-Central Semitic languages) were spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hejaz , Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages. In Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested. In eastern Arabia, inscriptions in

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3104-408: Is credited with establishing the rules of Arabic prosody . Al-Jahiz (776–868) proposed to Al-Akhfash al-Akbar an overhaul of the grammar of Arabic, but it would not come to pass for two centuries. The standardization of Arabic reached completion around the end of the 8th century. The first comprehensive description of the ʿarabiyya "Arabic", Sībawayhi's al - Kitāb , is based first of all upon

3201-472: Is credited with standardizing Arabic grammar , or an-naḥw ( النَّحو "the way" ), and pioneering a system of diacritics to differentiate consonants ( نقط الإعجام nuqaṭu‿l-i'jām "pointing for non-Arabs") and indicate vocalization ( التشكيل at-tashkīl ). Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi (718–786) compiled the first Arabic dictionary, Kitāb al-'Ayn ( كتاب العين "The Book of the Letter ع "), and

3298-449: Is favoured", which inevitably raises moral hazard problems. There have been at least two cases of companies seeking to restructure their debt (i.e. pay creditors less), claiming that debt they had issued was not in compliance with sharia. In a 2009 court filing Investment Dar, a Kuwaiti company claimed a transaction "was taking deposits at interest". In June 2017, an independent gas company (Dana Gas PJSC) declared two of its sukuk—with

3395-574: Is not present in the spoken varieties, but deletes Classical words that sound obsolete in MSA. In addition, MSA has borrowed or coined many terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times, and MSA continues to evolve. Some words have been borrowed from other languages—notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling and not real pronunciation (e.g., فِلْم film 'film' or ديمقراطية dīmuqrāṭiyyah 'democracy'). The current preference

3492-855: Is official in Mali and recognized as a minority language in Morocco, while the Senegalese government adopted the Latin script to write it. Maltese is official in (predominantly Catholic ) Malta and written with the Latin script . Linguists agree that it is a variety of spoken Arabic, descended from Siculo-Arabic , though it has experienced extensive changes as a result of sustained and intensive contact with Italo-Romance varieties, and more recently also with English. Due to "a mix of social, cultural, historical, political, and indeed linguistic factors", many Maltese people today consider their language Semitic but not

3589-572: Is the third most widespread official language after English and French, one of six official languages of the United Nations , and the liturgical language of Islam . Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the world and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, governments and the media. During the Middle Ages , Arabic was a major vehicle of culture and learning, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As

3686-590: Is the variety used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by some of the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" ( فُصْحَى fuṣḥá ) are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic. Some of the differences between Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) are as follows: MSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g., dhahaba 'to go') that

3783-413: Is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use loan translations (e.g., فرع farʻ 'branch', also used for the branch of a company or organization; جناح janāḥ 'wing', is also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.), or to coin new words using forms within existing roots ( استماتة istimātah ' apoptosis ', using the root موت m/w/t 'death' put into

3880-524: Is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the industrial and post-industrial era , especially in modern times. Due to its grounding in Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic is removed over a millennium from everyday speech, which is construed as a multitude of dialects of this language. These dialects and Modern Standard Arabic are described by some scholars as not mutually comprehensible. The former are usually acquired in families, while

3977-445: The Lisān al-ʻArab ). Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) largely follows the grammatical standards of Classical Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary. However, it has discarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no longer have any counterpart in the spoken varieties and has adopted certain new constructions and vocabulary from the spoken varieties. Much of the new vocabulary

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4074-757: The State of the Global Islamic Economy Report , 2015/16 and the IMF ) are In three years during and following the Financial crisis of 2007–2008 —2008, 2009, 2010—there were at least 21 substantial sukuk defaults, and several large near defaults such as that of Dubai World saved by a $ 10 billion loan from Abu Dhabi As of 2009, there were a number of cases where the sukuk had defaulted or were in serious trouble. In May 2009, Investment Dar of Kuwait defaulted on $ 100 million sukuk . Saad Group set up

4171-630: The Citi Sukuk Index—had an average maturity of 4.54 years, and most were issued by governments. The top four issuers by market weight—making up over 40% of the market—were: ISLAMIC DEVELOPMENT BANK , PERUSAHAAN PENERBIT SBSN INDOIII, SAUDI ELECTRICITY CO , SOQ SUKUK A QSC. About 3/4 of the sukuk market is domestic, not international. Most sukuk are not investment grade however, and as of 2015, there were 2,354 sukuk issues in total, including local currency denominated, non-global market sukuk, according to Thomson Reuters & Dinar Standard. According to

4268-568: The Xth form , or جامعة jāmiʻah 'university', based on جمع jamaʻa 'to gather, unite'; جمهورية jumhūriyyah 'republic', based on جمهور jumhūr 'multitude'). An earlier tendency was to redefine an older word although this has fallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف hātif 'telephone' < 'invisible caller (in Sufism)'; جريدة jarīdah 'newspaper' < 'palm-leaf stalk'). Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to

4365-494: The northern Hejaz . These features are evidence of common descent from a hypothetical ancestor , Proto-Arabic . The following features of Proto-Arabic can be reconstructed with confidence: On the other hand, several Arabic varieties are closer to other Semitic languages and maintain features not found in Classical Arabic, indicating that these varieties cannot have developed from Classical Arabic. Thus, Arabic vernaculars do not descend from Classical Arabic: Classical Arabic

4462-495: The special purpose vehicle (SPV) that issues the sukuk and sukuk holders do not have recourse to the originator". Asset prices may vary over time. In contrast "asset-based" sukuk ''do'' give their holders recourse to the originator, and so more closely resemble conventional bonds. Other critics include non-orthodox economist Mahmoud El-Gamal, who has complained that while providers of sukuk (and other Islamic finance instruments) will often describe their "distinguishing feature" as

4559-419: The "learned" tradition (Classical Arabic). This variety and both its classicizing and "lay" iterations have been termed Middle Arabic in the past, but they are thought to continue an Old Higazi register. It is clear that the orthography of the Quran was not developed for the standardized form of Classical Arabic; rather, it shows the attempt on the part of writers to record an archaic form of Old Higazi. In

4656-612: The "prohibition of interest", they will then proceed to report the interest rate that Islamic instruments pay. For instance, Reuters' 13 August 2002, coverage of Bahrain's $ 800 million sukuk ... followed their characterization of Islamic financial products as "interest-free" with a report that those sukuk will pay "4 percent annual profit". Arabic language Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized :  al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] )

4753-770: The "purest," most eloquent form of Arabic—initiating a process of jamʿu‿l-luɣah ( جمع اللغة 'compiling the language') which took place over the 8th and early 9th centuries. Kitāb al-'Ayn ( c.  8th century ), attributed to Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi , is considered the first lexicon to include all Arabic roots ; it sought to exhaust all possible root permutations —later called taqālīb ( تقاليب ) — calling those that are actually used mustaʿmal ( مستعمَل ) and those that are not used muhmal ( مُهمَل ). Lisān al-ʿArab (1290) by Ibn Manzur gives 9,273 roots, while Tāj al-ʿArūs (1774) by Murtada az-Zabidi gives 11,978 roots. Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions AAOIFI

4850-454: The 11th and 12th centuries in al-Andalus , the zajal and muwashah poetry forms developed in the dialectical Arabic of Cordoba and the Maghreb. The Nahda was a cultural and especially literary renaissance of the 19th century in which writers sought "to fuse Arabic and European forms of expression." According to James L. Gelvin , " Nahda writers attempted to simplify the Arabic language and script so that it might be accessible to

4947-571: The 4th to the 6th centuries, the Nabataean script evolved into the Arabic script recognizable from the early Islamic era. There are inscriptions in an undotted, 17-letter Arabic script dating to the 6th century CE, found at four locations in Syria ( Zabad , Jebel Usays , Harran , Umm el-Jimal ). The oldest surviving papyrus in Arabic dates to 643 CE, and it uses dots to produce the modern 28-letter Arabic alphabet. The language of that papyrus and of

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5044-779: The 8th century, knowledge of Classical Arabic had become an essential prerequisite for rising into the higher classes throughout the Islamic world, both for Muslims and non-Muslims. For example, Maimonides , the Andalusi Jewish philosopher, authored works in Judeo-Arabic —Arabic written in Hebrew script . Ibn Jinni of Mosul , a pioneer in phonology , wrote prolifically in the 10th century on Arabic morphology and phonology in works such as Kitāb Al-Munṣif , Kitāb Al-Muḥtasab , and Kitāb Al-Khaṣāʾiṣ    [ ar ] . Ibn Mada' of Cordoba (1116–1196) realized

5141-580: The Easter Cameron Gas company in the United States and Investment Dar of Kuwait. One of the unresolved questions is whether sukuk holders should stand in the line of creditors or in the line of the owners of underlying assets. In reviewing cases of sukuk defaults and bankruptcies, Muddassir Siddiqui complained that: Through reading many cases that have so far been litigated in courts around the world, I have found that in almost all cases,

5238-559: The Malaysian International Islamic Financial Centre, as of 2013 the biggest issuers of sukuk were governments (65.6%), and the second largest were power and utility companies (13.6%). Sukuk securities tend to be bought and held. As a result, few securities enter the secondary market to be traded. Furthermore, only public Sukuk are able to enter this market, as they are listed on stock exchanges. The secondary market—whilst developing—remains

5335-412: The Middle East and North Africa have become a badge of sophistication and modernity and ... feigning, or asserting, weakness or lack of facility in Arabic is sometimes paraded as a sign of status, class, and perversely, even education through a mélange of code-switching practises." Arabic has been taught worldwide in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools. Universities around

5432-690: The Qur'an is referred to by linguists as "Quranic Arabic", as distinct from its codification soon thereafter into " Classical Arabic ". In late pre-Islamic times, a transdialectal and transcommunal variety of Arabic emerged in the Hejaz , which continued living its parallel life after literary Arabic had been institutionally standardized in the 2nd and 3rd century of the Hijra , most strongly in Judeo-Christian texts, keeping alive ancient features eliminated from

5529-576: The Romance languages. Also, while it is comprehensible to people from the Maghreb , a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to Arabs from the Mashriq , much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers but relatively easily learned by them. This suggests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be considered separate languages. With

5626-506: The UAE". A month earlier, Dana had announced plans to restructure the debt, stating it needed to "focus on short to medium-term cash preservation." Sukuk holders, represented by fund manager BlackRock and Deutsche Bank , have been arguing against Dana in a London High Court. In October 2017, a court in the emirate of Sharjah in the UAE—where Dana had filed for protection—postponed a ruling on

5723-619: The application of the standards issued by it, where these standards have been applied in the Kingdom of Bahrain and the Dubai International Financial Centre, Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar, Sudan and Syria. The competent authorities in Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and South Africa issued guidelines derived from the standards and publications. The organizational structure of AAOIFI includes

5820-465: The assets of particular projects or special investment activity'." The Islamic Financial Services Board defines sukuk as: certificates with each sakk representing a proportional undivided ownership right in tangible assets, or a pool of predominantly tangible assets, or a business venture. These assets may be in a specific project or investment activity in accordance with Sharia rules and principles. The Securities Commission of Malaysia defined sukuk as

5917-400: The body which issues standards on accounting, auditing, governance, ethical, and Shari'a standards) defines Sukuk as "securities of equal denomination representing individual ownership interests in a portfolio of eligible existing or future assets," or "'certificates of equal value representing undivided shares in the ownership of tangible assets, usufructs and services or (in the ownership of)

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6014-465: The cheque or ṣakk system since the time of Harun al-Rashid (9th century) of the Abbasid Caliphate . The modern Western word "cheque" appears to have been derived from " sakk " (singular of sukuk ), which during the Middle Ages referred to a written agreement "to pay for goods when they were delivered" and was used to "avoid money having to be transported across dangerous terrain". Answering

6111-462: The company and its subsidiaries, albeit it had a side dispute with an investor, Blom Bank relating to the shariah aspects of the contracts"); and the "notorious" Saad/Al Gosaibi sukuk default ("more a market failure and an internecine dispute between the two Saudi partners"). At least one of the three major bond rating agencies for the US has indicated doubts about the "validity" of transfer of assets from

6208-574: The conversion of Semitic mimation to nunation in the singular. It is best reassessed as a separate language on the Central Semitic dialect continuum. It was also thought that Old Arabic coexisted alongside—and then gradually displaced— epigraphic Ancient North Arabian (ANA), which was theorized to have been the regional tongue for many centuries. ANA, despite its name, was considered a very distinct language, and mutually unintelligible, from "Arabic". Scholars named its variant dialects after

6305-401: The courts have struggled to reconcile the substance and form of the contract. Was it a sale, lease, construction or partnership contract or a financing arrangement between the parties? According to Rodney Wilson, when sukuk payments are delayed or fail, "the means of redress are potentially more complex than for conventional notes and bonds". In particular "under Shari’ah leniency towards debtors

6402-499: The creation of SPVs, as well as payment of various jurist and legal fees for structuring the bond issuance. According to a 2015 IMF report, the supply of Sukuk, "falls short of demand" and, with some exceptions "issuance takes place without a comprehensive strategy to develop the domestic market". Sukuk are seen as well-suited for infrastructure financing because of their risk-sharing property could also help fill financing gaps. National authorities should, therefore, focus on developing

6499-477: The creditors' right to $ 167.67 million in sukuk assets. (The final decision of the case "did not clearly resolve this issue".) Another major rating agency, S&P, downgraded the sukuk of Dubai Islamic bank and Sharjah Islamic Bank. According to Ibrahim Warde as of 2010, What is till unclear is what happens to sukuk when they fail—an issue that has not been tested in court. In Malaysia, some sukuk issues have junk status, and two other sukuk are already in default:

6596-587: The emergence of Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include: There are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions share which are unattested in any other Central Semitic language variety, including the Dadanitic and Taymanitic languages of

6693-728: The eve of the conquests: Northern and Central (Al-Jallad 2009). The modern dialects emerged from a new contact situation produced following the conquests. Instead of the emergence of a single or multiple koines, the dialects contain several sedimentary layers of borrowed and areal features, which they absorbed at different points in their linguistic histories. According to Veersteegh and Bickerton, colloquial Arabic dialects arose from pidginized Arabic formed from contact between Arabs and conquered peoples. Pidginization and subsequent creolization among Arabs and arabized peoples could explain relative morphological and phonological simplicity of vernacular Arabic compared to Classical and MSA. In around

6790-607: The fact that they participate in the innovations common to all forms of Arabic. The earliest attestation of continuous Arabic text in an ancestor of the modern Arabic script are three lines of poetry by a man named Garm(')allāhe found in En Avdat, Israel , and dated to around 125 CE. This is followed by the Namara inscription , an epitaph of the Lakhmid king Imru' al-Qays bar 'Amro, dating to 328 CE, found at Namaraa, Syria. From

6887-533: The finance occurs and then held to maturity, from an Islamic perspective. This is critical for debt trading at market value without incurring the prohibited riba (interest on money ). Step-by-step process of issuing a sukuk based on an asset: In this type of sukuk, fixed interest of a conventional bond is replaced by fixed lease income. Islamic economist Muhammad Akram Khan complains that sukuk are "different from conventional finance in form and formalities rather than substance", and "may even be more expensive" for

6984-510: The fourth most useful language for business, after English, Mandarin Chinese , and French. Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet , an abjad script that is written from right to left . Arabic is usually classified as a Central Semitic language . Linguists still differ as to the best classification of Semitic language sub-groups. The Semitic languages changed between Proto-Semitic and

7081-559: The growing market, the AAOIF issued "Shari’ah Standard No.17" on 'Investment Sukuk' in May 2003. It became effective starting 1 January 2004. As of early 2017, there were US$ 328 billion worth of sukuk outstanding worldwide. As of the end of 2016, there were about 146 US Dollar-denominated, Islamic fixed income securities issued in the global markets, that were investment-grade , and had a duration of at least one year. These securities—which make up

7178-597: The inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts. In 1997, a bureau of Arabization standardization was added to the Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization of the Arab League . These academies and organizations have worked toward the Arabization of the sciences, creating terms in Arabic to describe new concepts, toward

7275-615: The income provided than a conventional bond. An example of a sukuk was a $ 100 million security used to finance the construction and delivery of cooling plants in Abu Dhabi . This sukuk had an istisna'a and ijara structure and was issued by the Tabreed Financing Corporation (or National Central Cooling Company PJSC) in March 2004. If some "dissolution event" (e.g. destruction of the leased property) had interrupted

7372-613: The language. Software and books with tapes are an important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education; most teach Modern Standard Arabic, but some teach regional varieties from numerous countries. The tradition of Arabic lexicography extended for about

7469-604: The late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal "poetic koine" distinct from the spoken vernaculars developed based on the Bedouin dialects of Najd , probably in connection with the court of al-Ḥīra . During the first Islamic century, the majority of Arabic poets and Arabic-writing persons spoke Arabic as their mother tongue. Their texts, although mainly preserved in far later manuscripts, contain traces of non-standardized Classical Arabic elements in morphology and syntax. Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali ( c.  603 –689)

7566-420: The latter is taught in formal education settings. However, there have been studies reporting some degree of comprehension of stories told in the standard variety among preschool-aged children. The relation between Modern Standard Arabic and these dialects is sometimes compared to that of Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin vernaculars (which became Romance languages ) in medieval and early modern Europe. MSA

7663-883: The many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many regional variants; geographically distant varieties usually differ enough to be mutually unintelligible , and some linguists consider them distinct languages. However, research indicates a high degree of mutual intelligibility between closely related Arabic variants for native speakers listening to words, sentences, and texts; and between more distantly related dialects in interactional situations. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows , as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media such as poetry and printed advertising. Hassaniya Arabic , Maltese , and Cypriot Arabic are only varieties of modern Arabic to have acquired official recognition. Hassaniya

7760-406: The necessary infrastructure, including promoting true securitization and enhanced clarity over investors' rights, and on stepping up regular sovereign issuance to provide a benchmark for the private sector. Increased sovereign issuance should be underpinned by sound public financial management. "Key challenges" to the Islamic finance industry as a whole—including sukuk—as of 2016 include (according to

7857-727: The need for a lexical injection in Arabic, to suit concepts of the industrial and post-industrial age (such as sayyārah سَيَّارَة 'automobile' or bākhirah باخِرة 'steamship'). In response, a number of Arabic academies modeled after the Académie française were established with the aim of developing standardized additions to the Arabic lexicon to suit these transformations, first in Damascus (1919), then in Cairo (1932), Baghdad (1948), Rabat (1960), Amman (1977), Khartum  [ ar ] (1993), and Tunis (1993). They review language development, monitor new words and approve

7954-424: The one whose sound is heard but whose person remains unseen. Now the term al-hatif is used for a telephone. Therefore, the process of tawleed can express the needs of modern civilization in a manner that would appear to be originally Arabic. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their school-taught Standard Arabic as well as their native dialects, which depending on

8051-468: The originator in sukuk in the "event of an insolvency of the originator" and attempts by creditors to seize the assets. "Fitch has not reviewed any transaction to date that would satisfy these requirements." Underscoring Fitch's concern was the bankruptcy of East Cameron Partners ECP which issued a multiple-award-winning sukuk in 2006 but filed for bankruptcy in October 2008, prompting a legal dispute about

8148-549: The overhaul of Arabic grammar first proposed by Al-Jahiz 200 years prior. The Maghrebi lexicographer Ibn Manzur compiled Lisān al-ʿArab ( لسان العرب , "Tongue of Arabs"), a major reference dictionary of Arabic, in 1290. Charles Ferguson 's koine theory claims that the modern Arabic dialects collectively descend from a single military koine that sprang up during the Islamic conquests; this view has been challenged in recent times. Ahmad al-Jallad proposes that there were at least two considerably distinct types of Arabic on

8245-479: The payment of rent this would have prompted "the continuation of payments in the form of repurchase price". This reduced the risk structure of the sukuk to that (or near that) of conventional bonds, which permits the sukuk to earn the same or close to the same credit ratings that conventional bonds earn. Consequently, they are able to be sold at an interest rater lower than they might otherwise, although their transactions costs are higher than conventional bonds because of

8342-456: The precepts of Shariah. In a paper entitled "Sukuk and their Contemporary Applications" released in November 2007, Usmani identified the following three key structuring elements that differentiate Sukuk from conventional bonds: Usmani stated that by complex mechanisms Sukuk had taken on the same characteristics as conventional interest-bearing bonds, as they do not return to investors more than

8439-519: The project the sukuk is financing. According to the State of the Global Islamic Economy Report 2016/17, of the $ 2.004 trillion of assets being managed in a sharia compliant manner in 2014, $ 342 billion were sukuk, being made up of 2,354 sukuk issues. The Arabic term was borrowed from Classical Persian چک ( čak , “legal document, document, contract, deed of sale, bill”). In the classical period of Islam , Sakk (sukuk) meant any document representing

8536-410: The region may be mutually unintelligible. Some of these dialects can be considered to constitute separate languages which may have "sub-dialects" of their own. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within

8633-458: The same sentence. The issue of whether Arabic is one language or many languages is politically charged, in the same way it is for the varieties of Chinese , Hindi and Urdu , Serbian and Croatian , Scots and English, etc. In contrast to speakers of Hindi and Urdu who claim they cannot understand each other even when they can, speakers of the varieties of Arabic will claim they can all understand each other even when they cannot. While there

8730-458: The sole example of Medieval linguist Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati – who, while a scholar of the Arabic language, was not ethnically Arab – Medieval scholars of the Arabic language made no efforts at studying comparative linguistics, considering all other languages inferior. In modern times, the educated upper classes in the Arab world have taken a nearly opposite view. Yasir Suleiman wrote in 2011 that "studying and knowing English or French in most of

8827-563: The standardization of these new terms throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and toward the development of Arabic as a world language . This gave rise to what Western scholars call Modern Standard Arabic. From the 1950s, Arabization became a postcolonial nationalist policy in countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan. Arabic usually refers to Standard Arabic, which Western linguists divide into Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic. It could also refer to any of

8924-555: The sukuk. The issue has been called "one of the greatest challenges that the Islamic finance industry has faced in recent times", but the idea that the case is "a blow to Islamic finance" has also been dismissed as "poppycock". Sukuk have been criticized as evading the restrictions on riba , and imitating conventional bonds. In February 2008, the AAOIFI 's board of scholars, led by Sheik Muhammad Taqi Usmani , stated that as many as 85 percent of sukuk sold to date may not comply with all

9021-501: The towns where the inscriptions were discovered (Dadanitic, Taymanitic, Hismaic, Safaitic). However, most arguments for a single ANA language or language family were based on the shape of the definite article, a prefixed h-. It has been argued that the h- is an archaism and not a shared innovation, and thus unsuitable for language classification, rendering the hypothesis of an ANA language family untenable. Safaitic and Hismaic, previously considered ANA, should be considered Old Arabic due to

9118-451: The world have classes that teach Arabic as part of their foreign languages , Middle Eastern studies , and religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students to learn Arabic outside the academic world. There are many Arabic language schools in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study

9215-555: Was by Kuala Lumpur International Airport RM2.2 billion each in 1996 and 1997. In 2000, the government of Sudan issued domestic sovereign short-term sukuk worth 77 million Sudanese pounds on the basis of musharaka . In 2001, the sukuk market went international with the issuance of the first US-dollar-denominated ijara sukuk , worth $ 100 million by the Central Bank of Bahrain. Since then many sovereign and corporate sukuk issues have been offered in various jurisdictions. To standardize

9312-482: Was due to his criticisms or the Global Financial Crisis is a matter of debate. The Financial Times has described this as an "ongoing" debate over "form versus substance" in Islamic finance, identifying two kinds of sukuk—"asset-backed" sukuk and the more numerous, less strict, allegedly non-compliant "asset based" sukuk. In "asset-backed" sukuk there is "a true sale between the originator and

9409-601: Was established in accordance with the Agreement of Association which was signed by Islamic financial institutions on 26 February 1990 in Algiers . Then, it was registered on 27 March 1991 in Bahrain. It has members from more than 45 countries, including central banks and Islamic financial institutions and other parties working in the financial industry and banking, Islamic International. The commission has obtained support for

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