Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem

Call for Paper

International Seminar on

Islamic Alternatives to Poverty Alleviation: Zakat, Awqaf and Microfinance

Venue: Dhaka, Bangladesh

24-26 November 2006 SPONSORS

Islamic Research and Training Institute, IDB Islamic Economics Research Bureau, Dhaka Islami Bank Bangladesh Ltd., Dhaka

Important Dates
Submission of Abstracts: August 25, 2006 Submission of Papers: September 30, 2006 Notification of Acceptance: October 15, 2006

Please send your abstract to:

Dr. Habib Ahmed Islamic Research and Training Institute Islamic Development Bank, Jeddah FAX: 966-2-637 8927 E-mail: Hahmed@isdb.org Or Prof. Md. Sharif Hussain General Secretary, IERB E-mail : ierb@bdcom.com

Dear Brothers, Islamic Research and Training Institute (IRTI) of Islamic Development Bank Group, Jeddah, Islamic Economics Research Bureau, Dhaka, and Islami Bank Bangladesh Ltd., Dhaka are organizing an International Seminar on "Islamic Alternatives to Poverty Alleviation: Zakat, Awqaf and Microfinance" on November 24-26, 2006. The Seminar organizers encourage the submission of papers related to various aspects of poverty alleviation from Islamic perspectives. Issues of interest are included in the attached 'Outline of Seminar'. The papers are expected to be original, lucid, error free, and analytically rigorous. Selected papers contributed to the Seminar are likely to be published. The papers can be theoretical, empirical, and case studies. The upper limit for the size of the paper is 10,000 words. There is no submission fee. All abstracts and papers will go through a refereeing process before acceptance by the Seminar Technical Committee. The organizers will pay for the authors coming from outside Bangladesh single round-trip economy class air ticket, and for their boarding and lodging. For the authors coming from inside Bangladesh a token honorarium of Tk. 15,000/- per head will be paid.

OUTLINE OF THE SEMINAR Different policies have been tried in the last few decades to mitigate the menace of poverty, but it still persists extensively globally and in IDB member countries in particular. With the failure of experimenting in top-down (trickle down) development policies for a few decades to alleviate poverty in most developing countries, financing micro-enterprises is considered a "new paradigm" for bringing about development and eradicating absolute poverty. At the same time, Islam has instilled various institutions and structures through which income and wealth can be redistributed to fulfill the basic needs for all in the society. Among others, zakat, awqaf, and qard hassan played important role in increasing the overall welfare and mitigating poverty. Though there has been many seminars/conferences/workshops organized on issues related to microfinance, there has been no attempts to study how it can be combined with the traditional Islamic institutions to create newer models and synergies. The objectives of the seminar are : (a) to solicit papers that discuss how these traditional institutions and microfinance can be used in contemporary times to alleviate poverty in Muslim societies. (b) to make theoretical and case-study contributions that are expected to examine how the institutions of zakat and waqf can be revitalized by developing alternative workable models. (c) will also seek contributions that discuss how the social objectives of the Islamic financial system can be served by integrating the traditional Islamic institutions (zakat, awqaf, and qard hassan) with microfinance to raise the earning capabilities and incomes levels of the poor.