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The Impact of the Islamic Religion on the Harmonisation of International Accounting Standards

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The Impact of the Islamic Religion on the Harmonisation of International Accounting Standards

Justin Lingard – S200990
October 2010
Table of Contents Introduction 4 User requirements of financial reports 5 IFRS Compliance Issues with Shari ‘a law 6 Riba 6 Gharar 7 Zakat 7 Conclusion 8 References 10

Introduction
Islam is the world’s second largest religion with over 1.65 billion followers, which constitutes 24% of the world’s population (Kettani, 2010). Islam is a religion that encompasses all aspects of a Muslim’s life, from issues of an ethical, social and civil nature to economic and legal matters. In this way it is quite different to the secular view normally held in the West, which separates business decisions …show more content…

The basis behind using the VAS, which is essentially just a reshuffle of the income statement, was to focus on the value added to the community rather than the value to the owners. This reflects Islam’s focus towards public/social accountability rather than the individual accountability of the West (Baydoun and Willett, 2000). The VAS highlights the beneficiaries of the organisation’s activities, for example payments to employees, charities and of the zakat. The zakat is basically a tax that is payable above a certain threshold to the poor, sick or needy. It is one of the five pillars of Islam and is viewed by Muslims as an obligation to god.
The amount of the zakat is generally accepted as being 2.5% of all assets held for a full year (Lewis, 2001). It is also generally accepted that assets should be valued at the current market value for the calculation of the zakat (Vinnicombe and Park, 2007). For this reason Baydoun and Willett (2000) recommend the CVBS be included in addition to the traditional balance sheet so that users can see how the zakat is calculated and assess its compliance.
Baydoun and Willett (2000) are not alone in suggesting the use of current cost accounting (for example Gambling and Karim, 1986, Abdel Salam, 1982 and Sulaiman, 2001). It seems logical that given the vast differences between Islamic principles and those embedded in Western accounting, that Islamic

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