Conventional wisdom traces the global financial crisis to lax lending standards, weaknesses in the credit transfer process in securitized financial markets, and overly optimistic evaluations of structured mortgage securities. From an Islamic economic perspective, the causes are more fundamental and have their roots in greed, uncertainty, speculation, poor governance, usury and fixed interest debt, financialization and budget deficits ? all issues on which Islam has a strong stance.


Mervyn K. Lewis is Professor of Banking and Finance in the School of Commerce at the University of South Australia. Previously he was Midland Bank Professor of Money and Banking at the University of Nottingham, and Course Director of the MBA in Financial Studies. He was also a Consultant to the Australian Financial System Inquiry, Visiting Scholar at the Bank of England, inaugural Securities Commission-University of Malaya Visiting Scholar, and has been visiting professor at the Universities of Cambridge, Melbourne, Vienna, Wuhan, Mauritius, Goettingen and Euromed Marseilles. In 1986 he was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. Professor Lewis has authored or co-authored twenty-one books, 65 articles and 75 chapters. His book, Public Private Partnerships: the Worldwide Revolution in Infrastructure Provision and Project Finance (2004), co-authored with Darrin Grimsey, won the 2005 Blake Dawson Waldron Prize for Business Literature. The latest volume is An Islamic Perspective on Governance (2009).