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The Bar Council Islamic Finance Committee (“IFC”) took the introductory step of paying a visit to the Bank Negara Malaysia Law Harmonisation Committee (“LHC”) at 12:30 pm, at Bank Negara Malaysia, Jalan Dato’ Onn, on 21 July 2011 (Thursday).  IFC members, led by Christopher Leong, Vice-President of the Malaysian Bar, were welcomed by Tun Abdul Hamid b Haji Mohamad, Chairman of LHC, and LHC members.   

LHC was established to position Malaysian law as the law of choice for international Islamic finance transactions.  In doing so, LHC aimed to review existing laws in Malaysia to improve the certainty of its usage in Islamic financial transactions at both domestic and international levels.

In his welcome address, Tun Abdul Hamid b Haji Mohamad enlightened IFC members with a brief description of LHC’s objectives.  He gave a bird’s eye view of the importance of Islamic finance and the need for its stakeholders to explore and venture into this new area of finance, which was headed towards global recognition.  Tun Abdul Hamid b Haji Mohamad summarised the topic succinctly by pointing out that “the future of banking and commercial needs is Islamic finance”. 

Tun Abdul Hamid b Haji Mohamad explained that in order to capture the growing need and demand for Islamic finance at both a local and international level, it was necessary to equip its stakeholders and players with knowledge and latest updates on the subject.  He elaborated that Malaysia could play a major role in leading the industry as the country was naturally of an Islamic background and had knowledge of the English common law.  The ability to merge the English common law with Islamic law requirements would enable Malaysian legal experts to lead the movement to come up with modern commercial and banking transactions that were Syariah compliant.  Tun Abdul Hamid b Haji Mohamad then offered to allocate two seats of an upcoming LHC subcommittee to review the National Land Code to Members of the Malaysian Bar.

The Bar Council team, in response to Tun Abdul Hamid b Haji Mohamad’s speech, agreed to work closely with LHC and acknowledged that there was a growing demand for the Islamic finance industry.  Christopher Leong and Yasmeen Shariff, Chairperson of IFC, also told LHC of ongoing efforts undertaken by IFC to educate Members of the Malaysian Bar on Islamic finance through seminars and workshops.  Christopher Leong, on behalf of Bar Council, expressed his gratitude to LHC for allocating the two above-mentioned seats to Members.  LHC was also informed that IFC would forward to it the latter’s views and recommendations on the laws in Malaysia that needed to be harmonised with Syariah laws to facilitate Islamic finance transactions.

Owing to the lively and fruitful discussion, the meeting, which had originally been scheduled for only 30 minutes, lasted over twice as long.  The IFC would like to thank LHC, and Tun Abdul Hamid b Haji Mohamad in particular, for graciously welcoming the inaugural meeting.