In the wake of a global financial crisis that owed much to overleverage and speculation, the appeal of Islamic finance as a schema that avoids both has grown. However, the subject, and how it is regulated, is often poorly understood. This article aims to answer two questions: what is Islamic finance, and how is it regulated.

There are two key strands regarding how it is regulated: first, there is the aspect of how Islamic financial institutions self-regulate, which involves an assessment of