ANALYSIS The question that arise after reading this article is whether the concept of musharakah in agricultural financing, especially for the poor can be realisable. It is many times mentioned that the Islamic banking system that we have today is still laid down on the basis of a debt-based financing system, which may be seen as a reflection of the conventional banking. Examples are those of ijarah, salam, istisna’ and most prominently murabahah, the most popular and favourable instrument in the market. However, reviewers are certain that the financial experts as well as scholars are working their way from moving towards that of a more equity-based financing system and a good example is this article being reviewed. The need for an equity-based system have been mentioned by many scholars in published articles. Mufti Taqi Usmani (2002), who is one of the leading Shari’ah experts, also further mentioned this in his writing stating that the real and ideal instruments of financing in Shari’ah are musharakah and mudarabah. Hakimi (2011) asserted that even though the initial structures of Islamic banking proposed by Islamic scholars in the 1950s to 1960s were based on the concept of profit sharing and loss, which is based on the principles of mudarabah and musharakah, Islamic banks rarely offer these instruments to their customers these days. Even though profit-loss sharing is the ideal way in Islamic Finance, in reality, as of now, it is currently marginalised by Islamic financial institutions. Dar and Presley (2002), stated the failure of Islamic financial institutions in implementing the profit and loss sharing in the following:
Almost all theoretical models of Islamic banking are either based on mudaraba(h) or musharaka(h) or both, but to-date actual practice