A Review of Islamic Investment Literature

This paper reviews the empirical literature on the contemporary issues of Islamic investments and highlights the future research directions. The growing literature during the last several years and the penetration of Islamic investments beyond the Muslim majority countries motivate us to review the empirical studies in the area. We therefore focus our literature review on mutual funds, sukuk and equity investments, analysing 81 articles from the most important journals dealing with the topic. The mixed findings in this area help the understanding of professionals not familiar with Islamic investment to identify the trends of the literature for important decisions. Our results have also important financial implications for asset managers willing to include Islamic financial instruments into a well-diversified portfolio.