Finding a Way to Enhance Impact of Islamic Microfinance: The Role of Spiritual and Religious Enhancement Programmes

Abstract

This study assesses impact of Islamic microfinance and look for possible factors that may strengthen impact of this Shari’ah compliant microfinancing service. For this purpose, it explores possible impact that can be delivered by spiritual and religious capacity building that Islamic microfinance can provide to their clients. To achieve this objective, this study distributed survey to 400 Muslim microentrepreneurs who mostly received Islamic microfinancing. The findings of this study found Islamic microfinance initially able to provide positive impact on their clients with some limitations. In addition, this study also found that higher spirituality level in general able to bring more wealth, while having higher religiosity may enhance clients’ economic performance. These findings implicate that both spiritual and religious enhancement programmes need to be adopted in capacity building provided by Islamic microfinance institutions to their clients. This study argues that the spiritual and religious enhancement programmes in short run is able to enhance positive impact of the Islamic microfinance on their clients.

Keywords: Islamic Microfinance, Impact, Poverty, Spirituality, Religiosity.