Islamic finance as it exists today has been shown to reduce economic efficiency by increasing transaction costs, without providing any substantial economic value to its customers. Many have argued that the industry is actually demand driven, and hence jurists and lawyers engaged in Shariʿa arbitrage provide value, by bringing conventional financial products to a market segment that would not have access otherwise. Thus, proponents of that argument assert, Shariʿa-arbitrage mechanisms should be seen as enabling juristic efforts to recharacterize modern financial transactions (takhrij fiqhi), rather than legal stratagems to circumvent prohibitions (hiyal Sharʿiyya). Moreover, the argument continues, to the extent that Islamic legal restrictions have economic content, the gradual progress of Islamic finance toward increasingly more efficient and more authentically Islamic products will eventually allow the industry to serve the Islamic ideal.

In fact, however, Islamic finance has been largely a supply-driven industry, with jurists who participate actively in Shariʿa arbitrage helping to expand the industry's customer base through indirect advertisement (at various conferences and publications), as well as religious admonishment that Muslims should avoid conventional finance. The form-above-substance juristic approach to Shariʿa arbitrage has also been shown to squander the prudential regulatory content of premodern Islamic jurisprudence, while reducing economic efficiency for customers through spurious transactions, not to mention legal and jurist fees.