Daromir Rudnyckyj's Beyond Debt is a timely, highly readable, and informative anthropological study of Malaysia's efforts to transform Kuala Lumpur into a global center of Islamic finance. Capitalizing on global fears that followed the 2008 financial crisis and responding to increased scrutiny of financial instruments by shariah committees, Malaysia-based Islamic finance experts have been devoting significant effort towards perfecting new financial instruments that can deliver returns to investors without debt or interest. Developing interest-free financial instruments is central to Islamic finance, as pious investors seek to abide by Qur'anic prohibitions against incurring unjust financial gains through the usurious collection of interest gained from debt (riba). To tell this story, Rudnyckyj builds on multi-sited fieldwork among Islamic financial experts conducted during eight trips to Malaysia between 2010 and 2015, and at numerous global conferences in places ranging from Dubai to Cambridge, Massachusetts. The book traces the negotiations global Islamic...

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