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Islamic banking and finance — the industry built around avoiding interest and other financial practices found in violation of sharia — has been both praised and criticized by observers.
The industry has been praised for turning a "theory" into an industry that has grown to about $2 trillion in size; for attracting banking users whose religious objections have kept them away from conventional banking services, drawing non-Muslim bankers into the field, and introducing a more stable, less risky form of finance.
However, the industry has also been criticized for ignoring its "basic philosophy" and moved in the wrong direction over the decades — leading both outsiders and rank and file Muslims to question it. This has happened first by the sidelining the original finance method advocated by promoters — risk-sharing finance — in favor of fixed-markup finance of purchases , and then by distorting the rules of that fixed-markup murabaha, effectively delivering conventional cash interest loans following conventional interest rates, but disguised with "ruses and subterfuges" and burdened with "higher costs, bigger risks".
Other issues/complaints raised include a lack of effort by the industry to help small traders and the poor; the question of how to deal with inflation, late payments, the lack of hedging of currencies and rates or sharia-compliant places to park short term funds for liquidity; the non-Muslim ownership of much of Islamic banking, and the concentration of what ownership is in Muslim hands.