Getting `Real’ About Islamic Finance

The paper is aimed at conversation of the relevance and significance of what is frequently labeled as “Islamic finance” for such investors in in light of the noted considerations.  The foil for exploring that is the notion of the “real” in three arguably related senses: the effort to promote investments in so-called “real assets” by institutional investors and what lies behind it; discourse about “financialization” especially is it relates to notions of and the relationships between a so-called “real economy” and a/the financial sector or sphere; and the importance of notions of the “real” which are prominent in discourse about Islamic finance and the normative and instrumental underpinnings of it which derive from what I refer to as the Islamic narrative.