ANALYSIS ON THE PRINCIPLES OF MAQASID SHARIAH IN ISLAMIC HOTELS

Abstract

Tourism industry’s development recently is irrefutably hit the international awareness and sparked the local interest. Statistical data of Tourism Malaysia showed a rise of 6.8 per cent tourists’ growth from 2018 leads to the figure of 13.35 million international tourists in 2019. Malaysia, as a multicultural country with the majority of 63.7% of the population are Muslims, should take active steps to intensify the ways in discovering the market needs. Desires of Islam need to be cleared and the spirit of Maqasid Shariah have to be manifested equally to the Muslim and the non-Muslim. This paper therefore, aims to discuss on the necessity to clarify the relevancy of having Islamic hotel as to align with the basic principles of Maqasid Shariah and to see whether the current practices and policies are coherent with the Maqasid.  This qualitative study embarked on content analysis from a few relevant policies and previous studies. In addition, an in-depth interview was conducted with two relevant local authorities. Having analyzed the information gained, it was found that as now, no specific legislative Islamic hotel policy was in place. However, few limited existing guidelines are found to intrinsically applying the Principles of Maqasid Shariah. The results presented here have profound implications on a proper drafting of an inclusive Islamic Hotel policy in the future. It is hoped that Maqasid will be set as a benchmark for the future policy setting as this will boost the confidence of the tourists in visiting the country.