Islamic cooperatives: a route to poverty alleviation and economic development

Despite numerous efforts and various socioeconomic models adopted by local and international agencies, poverty reduction and inclusive economic growth remains a key challenge particularly in developing countries. In this backdrop the chapter examines the issues that led to limited success of earlier models used for inclusive growth and the role of the commercial Islamic cooperative (CIC) in social uplifting of a society. Given its unique structure based on customer ownership this research suggests capitalizing on the innate strengths of CIC, that is, dual bottom line (customer value and equity together), low cost, good governance and continuous provision of social cohesion. The authors present a commercial model of an Islamic cooperative as a means for broad-based economic development in a developing country. The study evaluates the effectiveness of the proposed model of an Islamic cooperative while analysing the challenges in its implementation