Purpose In societies with strong presence of Islam, Islamic instruments with more scope for fairness and equity can be innovatively harnessed to play an increasing role in the development process and poverty alleviation schemes. Poor smallholder farmers dominate agricultural production in many developing countries and contribute a significant portion of global food production. This paper aims to develop a scheme to improve poor smallholder farmers’ vulnerable financial situation through the application of Zakah and Salam contract, using Bangladesh as a case study. Secondary goals are to show the effect of the scheme on food security and relevance to Nigeria. Design/methodology/approach The authors explore the existing traditional modes of financing available to poor smallholders, identify their challenges and propose an appropriate Islamic financing scheme. Findings With the Zakah-based Salam forward contract, the proposed scheme would procure food through Institutional Demand to offer interest free financing, fair price and access to new marketing channels and reduce income uncertainty for the rural smallholders. The discussions indicate that the local food security will be enhanced through incentivized farming activities and disbursement of food from the food bank to the Zakah-eligible food insecure local people. Research limitations/implications This proposal brings forth a potentially powerful idea that needs further empirical validation. Originality/value The religion-based Institutional Demand initiative to promote smallholder agricultural development and social protection is a novel one. The attempt to apply the framework to Nigeria context shows the potential of the framework to generalize for other Muslim developing countries with similar characteristics, especially the poorer agriculture-based countries.

Objective – Islamic banking has emerged as a robust and sound banking system across the globe. Despite its increasing popularity, there is a dearth of awareness in both Muslim and Non-Muslim countries which slows the pace of development of the system. This paper, there-fore, reviews critically some empirical studies on awareness and perception of Islamic bank-ing products and services.Design/methodology – The research involves review and synthesis of prior studies on customers’ awareness and perception of Islamic baking.Results – The result of the review reveals that good awareness and perception of the public on Islamic banking products and services are critical to the development of Islamic banking and finance. The study concludes that significant progress has been made in Muslim and Non-Muslim countries with the potentials to dominate conventional banking shortly in some jurisdictions.Limitation/Suggestion – Thus, the study recommends that operators and regulators of Islamic banks need to pay due attention to public awareness and perception with a view to enhancing patronage of the Islamic banking products and services and enabling the sector to effectively compete with its already well-established conventional counterpart.