Professionalizing the role of Shari'ah auditors: How Malaysia can generate economic benefits

•We find an inevitable need for a new breed of Islamic accountants/auditors.•Existing accounting/audit qualifications fail to produce holistic Shari'ah auditors.•Substantial foreign exchange is lost in importing western accounting qualifications.•Our proposed ACSAA models could help overcome such issues.•Malaysian infrastructure makes it an ideal country to kick start ACSAA.

The paper presents arguments on the need for inventing the profession of Shari'ah auditing and why Malaysia should take the lead to create an Association of Chartered Shari'ah Accountants and Auditors (ACSAA) that can result in long run economic benefits for the country. The paper also critically analyzes how accounting and auditing membership is being exported worldwide by few dominant players to generate economic benefits for their respective origin countries and how existing Islamic accounting and auditing qualification suppliers have failed to deliver and create holistic Shari'ah accountants/auditors required to serve in an ideal Islamic economy. The paper proposes 2 models through which ACSAA can be made a practical reality.