Regulatory and legislative landscape for Islamic financial institutions: the case of Italy

Abstract

The paper examines the regulatory accommodation process of Shari’a-compliant financial institutions within the Italian legal framework.The paper is divided into four sections. The first two sections adopt a business-based approach drawinga comparison between the Islamic and the Italian banking models in terms of institutional and functional requirements. The third section suggests that Shari’a rules and, as a result, Shari’a-compliant financial operations, represent a cultural phenomenon, where “cultural” means that Islamic finance is a set of ways of thinking and behaving which every Muslim endorses step by steps thanks to the educational process.In the conclusions it is argued that the Italian legal system poses no formal hurdles to the accommodation of Islamic financial entities.