This committee comprised members from among key government stakeholders, including the Attorney General’s Chambers as well as industry players and experienced Islamic finance legal practitioners. We are also pleased to announce the appointment of Tun Abdul Hamid bin Mohamad, the former Chief Justice who is also a member of our Shariah Advisory Council, to chair this committee. We will be engaging with the industry and general public for feedback on the laws which require harmonisation. Further details will be announced in due course. The underlying objective in having this Law Harmonisation Committee is to position and strengthen existing laws as the laws of choice for Islamic financial transactions. It is also consistent with our objectives to create an enabling environment that facilitates and accommodates the development of the industry, a clear and efficient system that preserves that enforceability of Islamic financial contracts and a credible and reliable forum for settlement of legal disputes arising from Islamic financial transactions. The support provided by the legal fraternity to Islamic finance has been instrumental to the progress of the industry. Crafting legislation to facilitate the growth and development of Islamic finance requires dedication and skill, and the ties that have since developed between lawyers, regulators, Shariah scholars and industry practitioners, have inevitably blossomed into a strong relationship based on mutual understanding and close co-operation. Going forward, it remains crucial for this close collaboration to continue so that more pioneering progress can be achieved in paving the way towards greater international integration and expansion of the Islamic finance industry.
Our journey officially began with the establishment of the first Islamic bank in 1983 and in the year that followed, the first Takaful operator. We have never looked back since then to evolve a comprehensive domestic Islamic financial system operating alongside the conventional financial system, comprising the Islamic banking institutions, the takaful industry, the Islamic money and capital markets. These respective components have been progressively liberalized over the years, allowing for more foreign presence in the market to become internationally more integrated. This has led to diversity in market players, and the increased competitive forces now provide the impetus for increased innovation in the market. The dynamism in the market has been supported by a robust regulatory and supervisory framework, reinforced by the legal and Shariah framework, the payment and settlement systems. Our Shariah framework in particular is distinctively robust, through the consultative role of the Shariah Advisory  BIS Review 102/2010  1  Council of Bank Negara Malaysia and Securities Commission, complemented by the Shariah board of individual Islamic financial institutions. This strategy has served us well, as it had nurtured innovation whilst ensuring stability in the marketplace. Collectively, the strategies that we had adopted have brought about significant progress on several fronts, in the areas of institutional structure, diversity of players, operational efficiency and the wide range of products and services. Several global players have chosen Malaysia as their regional base for Islamic finance.