Dr. Mohammed Nurul Alam, recently visited Kenya on a research visit involving a number of established Islamic Banks in Nairobi. In an exclusive interview with the ‘New Dawn’ newspaper, he talked about Islamic Banks promoting micro-finance to help fight poverty in rural areas.
Dr. Nurul emphasized that the biggest challenge for Islamic Banking at the moment is creating awareness, although there has been tremendous growth for the phenomenon since its inception nearly three decades ago.
“After completing my research with Grameen Bank (Brain child of Nobel Peace Prize winner (2006), Dr. Muhammad Yunus). I proposed the introduction of micro-finance in Islamic Banking to enable less fortunate individuals to access loans in a Shari’a compliant way. In my PhD thesis I had to prove that there was need for micro loans in Islamic banking and formulate a method to operationalize it.”
Dr. Nurul started his career as a teacher in 1979, as a senior lecturer at Kenya Institute of Administration (KIA) lower Kabete in Nairobi under the UNDP volunteer program. He went on to complete his Chartered Accountancy from Bangladesh before moving to Sweden to pursue his PhD in Islamic Banking. He has since then taught in Sweden, Canada and Oman.
Dr. Nurul currently teaches Accounting and Islamic Banking to MBA students at the Canadian University Dubai.