Vol 2, No 2 (2021) 63–81

Employ­ment Oppor­tu­ni­ties as Halal Entre­pre­neur for Halal Sci­ence Grad­u­ates: UNISSA as Model

Nur­deng Deuraseh, Siti Nora’aini Pg Sufredin

Halalan Thayy­iban Research Cen­tre, Uni­ver­si­ty Islam Sul­tan Sharif Ali, BE 1310, Brunei Darus­salam.

Cor­re­spon­dence should be addressed to Nur­deng Deuraseh: nurdeng.​deuraseh@​unissa.​edu.​bn

Cite this: Nusan­tara Halal J. 2021, Vol. 2 No.2 pp. 63–81 (Arti­cle) | Received 28 Sep­tem­ber 2021 | Revised 29 Novem­ber 2021 | Accept­ed 22 Decem­ber 2021 | Pub­lished 29 Decem­ber 2021 | https://​dx​.doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​7​9​7​7​/​u​m​0​6​0​.​2​0​2​1​v​2​p​0​6​3​-​081

Abstract

The high unem­ploy­ment rate among grad­u­ates is not a new issue.  This issue is of con­cern in many coun­tries includ­ing Brunei Darus­salam. Brunei’s Gov­ern­ment could not accom­mo­date all the unem­ployed grad­u­ates with gov­ern­men­tal job, there­fore, as a bril­liant and cre­ative grad­u­ates, they need to be inde­pen­dent and cre­ative to cre­ate job oppor­tu­ni­ties. So, one of the mea­sures to reduce this prob­lem is by the intro­duc­tion of Entre­pre­neur­ship. The con­cept of entre­pre­neur­ship is not some­thing new in Islam as it can be observed from the his­to­ry as a noble pro­fes­sion prac­ticed by the Prophet Muham­mad and His com­pan­ions.  How­ev­er, in recent times, schol­ars of the Islam­ic econ­o­my have intro­duced a new term, “Halal entre­pre­neur­ship” or “Halal­pre­neur­ship” to define and dif­fer­en­ti­ate entre­pre­neurs in the Halal indus­try from the con­ven­tion­al entre­pre­neurs. Brunei Darus­salam is ide­al­ly posi­tioned as a des­ti­na­tion for doing busi­ness and invest­ment. The aim of this paper is to under­stand the dif­fer­ence between entre­pre­neur and Halal entre­pre­neur. To what extend are there job oppor­tu­ni­ties for UNISSA Halal Sci­ence Grad­u­ates as Halal entre­pre­neur and to explore the impor­tance of Halal entre­pre­neur­ship in the devel­op­ment of coun­ty and how can it help reduce youth unem­ploy­ment in Brunei. This research used main­ly a qual­i­ta­tive approach which draw from both pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary data. The pri­ma­ry data and infor­ma­tion were col­lect­ed through inter­views with local entre­pre­neurs in dif­fer­ent sec­tor with dif­fer­ent type of entre­pre­neur­ship. The sec­ondary data was col­lect­ed from the books and arti­cles. The find­ings of this research were most­ly infor­mants agreed that there is the dif­fer­ence between entre­pre­neur and Halal entre­pre­neur. The result shows that there are vari­eties of job oppor­tu­ni­ties as Halal entre­pre­neur for UNISSA Grad­u­ates of Halal Sci­ence such as being a Halal entre­pre­neur in food sec­tor such as being a Halal food pro­duc­er. Trav­el and tourism, cos­met­ic and agri­cul­ture sec­tor also open for Halal sci­ence grad­u­ates to tap into. Open­ing mod­est Mus­limah wear, ser­vices such as Mus­lim friend­ly spa also as an oppor­tu­ni­ty. Major­i­ty of the infor­mants agreed that Halal entre­pre­neur­ship is impor­tant in the devel­op­ment of coun­ty, and it help reduce youth unem­ploy­ment in Brunei.

Key­words: Entre­pre­neur­ship, Halal entre­pre­neur, Job oppor­tu­ni­ties, UNISSA Halal Sci­ence Grad­u­ates, Employment.

Introduction

The estab­lish­ment of Halalan Thayy­iban Research Cen­tre is an effort to uphold the com­mand of His Majesty Sul­tan Haji Has­sanal Bolki­ah of Brunei Darus­salam dur­ing the 6th Hafl Al-Takhar­ruj (Con­vo­ca­tion) Cer­e­mo­ny of Sul­tan Sharif Ali Islam­ic Uni­ver­si­ty on 20th Muhar­ram 1438H cor­re­spond­ing to 22^th Octo­ber 2016M, at the Inter­na­tion­al Con­ven­tion Cen­tre, Berakas, Brunei Darus­salam, had giv­en his speech as below:

“In fact, there is still a wide range of oppor­tu­ni­ty that needs to be explored by UNISSA. Dur­ing this time, Halal indus­try has become one of the most rapid­ly devel­op­ing fields which spreads glob­al­ly. Has it not that the Halal aspect been demand­ed in the reli­gion of Islam? The glob­al mar­ket val­ue is increas­ing, and it is esti­mat­ed to be large. It increas­es by 16% of the total of world’s food indus­try and can reach up to 20% of the world’s com­merce in the food prod­ucts alone.  There­fore, I ful­ly sup­port UNISSA’s plan to estab­lish Cen­tre of Excel­lence of Halal Research at UNISSA; as a cat­a­lyst to my wish to make Brunei Darus­salam as the ‘glob­al Halal hub’, where­in will aid in boost­ing the country’s eco­nom­ic growth.” (Peli­ta Brunei, 2016/​25 Muhar­ram 1438).

Halalan Thayy­iban Research Cen­tre has offered three types of pro­grams such as bach­e­lor, mas­ter, and Doc­tor of Phi­los­o­phy in Halal Sci­ence. As report­ed from the cen­ter, stat­ed that there was 58% of Halal sci­ence alum­ni that have not yet employed and anoth­er 42% of them are employed.  This result showed that Halal Sci­ence Grad­u­ates also faced unem­ploy­ment issue. Brunei’s Gov­ern­ment could not accom­mo­date all the unem­ployed grad­u­ates with gov­ern­men­tal job, there­fore, as a bril­liant and cre­ative grad­u­ates, they need to be inde­pen­dent and cre­ative to cre­ate job oppor­tu­ni­ties. Accord­ing to Deuraseh, Her­ad­hyak­sa, one of the mea­sures to reduce this prob­lem is by the intro­duc­tion of Entre­pre­neur­ship [1]. Islam encour­ages the Mus­lims to engage in the busi­ness activ­i­ties. Regard­ing this, there are many hadith nar­rat­ed on this sub­ject, which is includ­ed: It was nar­rat­ed from Ismail bin ‘Ubaid bin Rifa ‘ah, from his father, that his grand­fa­ther Rifa ‘ah said:

“We went out with the Mes­sen­ger of Allah SWT and the peo­ple were trade ear­ly in the morn­ing. He called them: “0 mer­chants!” and when they looked up and craned their necks, he said: “The mer­chants will be raised on the Day of Res­ur­rec­tion as immoral peo­ple, apart from those who fear Allah and act right­eous­ly and speak the truth (i.e., those who are hon­est).” (Nar­rat­ed Ibnu Majah and Tirmidhi).

Entre­pre­neur­ship is one of the most over­looked vehi­cles for tak­ing the ummah back to its gold­en age and giv­ing da’wah at the same time. It is a great means to have mean­ing­ful impact in the world by chang­ing the world in your own spe­cial and mean­ing­ful way and chang­ing your own world for the bet­ter too. More and more peo­ple are start­ing busi­ness­es from their bed­rooms because they see the pos­si­bil­i­ties and the poten­tial. In this mod­ern era of the inter­net and social media, peo­ple can start busi­ness­es from their lap­tops. As Halal Sci­ence Grad­u­ates, this is a big oppor­tu­ni­ty in spread­ing the knowl­edge of Halal through entre­pre­neur­ship because it acts as a tool for Da’wah, cre­ate social change, makes nations pros­per and entre­pre­neur­ship is bet­ter alter­na­tive to solve unem­ploy­ment prob­lem [2]. For this rea­son, the high­light of this study is to know what the job oppor­tu­ni­ties for UNISSA Halal Sci­ence grad­u­ates as Halal entre­pre­neur are and how it helps in the devel­op­ment of coun­try and in reduc­ing unem­ploy­ment rate [3].

Definition of Entrepreneurship

Entre­pre­neur­ship is the abil­i­ty and readi­ness to devel­op, orga­nize and run a busi­ness enter­prise, along with any of its uncer­tain­ties to make a prof­it. The word “entre­pre­neur­ship” is orig­i­nal­ly from the French word “entre­pren­erd” sig­ni­fy­ing ‘to embrace or to take in one’s very own hands. Busi­ness enter­prise can be depict­ed as a pro­ce­dure of activ­i­ty a busi­nessper­son attempts to build up his ven­ture. It is a cre­ative activ­i­ty that is based on the abil­i­ty to cre­ate and estab­lish some­thing from near­ly noth­ing. Entre­pre­neurs are risk tak­ers who react to oppor­tu­ni­ties, bear uncer­tain­ty, and bal­ance the sup­ply and demand in the spe­cif­ic mar­ket [4].

Halal Entrepreneurship or Halalpreneurship

Halal­pre­neur­ship is holis­tic in Islam entails entre­pre­neur­ship as an ele­ment that is not sep­a­rat­ed from Islam. Halal­pre­neur­ship is the entre­pre­neur­ship that is with­in Shari’ah’s scope (Aqi­dah, Fiqh, Akhlaq). So that its activ­i­ties are not alien­at­ed from oblig­a­tions in Islam. Halal­pre­neur­ship includes the role of the human being as a Khal­i­fah (Caliph) in the world, to devel­op and pros­per the world; means the activ­i­ties of entre­pre­neur­ship should con­tribute to the good and pros­per­i­ty of soci­ety, Ummah and human­i­ty [3, 4]. 

Entrepreneurship in Brunei Darussalam

Entre­pre­neur­ship is seen as vital, as it can pro­vide an alter­na­tive solu­tion to unem­ploy­ment espe­cial­ly among fresh Uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­ates. His Majesty, the Sul­tan and Yang Di-Per­tu­an Negara Brunei Darus­salam, in addi­tion, has high­light­ed the impor­tance of entre­pre­neur­ship in His Titah, in con­junc­tion with the fifth Nation­al Youth Day held at the Nation­al Indoor Sta­di­um in August 2010 [6].

“Youth involve­ment in entre­pre­neur­ship must con­tin­ue to be encour­aged through train­ing and edu­ca­tion, as a sol­id under­stand­ing of this area can help reduce unem­ploy­ment among youth”

In the light of above order, the Bruneian gov­ern­ment takes sev­er­al ini­tia­tives in encour­ag­ing entre­pre­neur­ship to the young gen­er­a­tion. These are sev­er­al agen­cies respon­si­ble in the devel­op­ment of young entre­pre­neurs such as Darus­salam Enter­prise (DARE), I‑centre, Livewire and BIBD. These agen­cies are estab­lished to guide and give entre­pre­neurs sem­i­nars, train­ing, and entre­pre­neur­ship cours­es. Oth­er than these agen­cies, schools and uni­ver­si­ties also take a role in pro­mot­ing entre­pre­neur­ship as one of the main courses. 

The Brunei Darus­salam is a small coun­try, and it is blessed with nat­ur­al resources such as petro­le­um and nat­ur­al gas. For­tu­nate­ly, with the dis­cov­ery of oil in Seria dur­ing 1929, it has become the major dri­ve for the country’s econ­o­my. And today, Brunei Darussalam’s gross domes­tic prod­uct (GDP) per capi­ta is val­ued around USD30,666.620 in 2018. This shows how well and sta­ble Brunei’s econ­o­my is, com­pared with our GDP per capi­ta back in 1965 which is only USD1,113.819. Brunei Darus­salam was rec­og­nized as the world’s most sta­ble macro­econ­o­my by the World Eco­nom­ic Forum (GCI 2010/​11), Brunei Darus­salam is ide­al­ly posi­tioned as a des­ti­na­tion for doing busi­ness and invest­ment for the fol­low­ing rea­sons: High qual­i­ty of life, polit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty, strong oil and gas indus­try, well-edu­cat­ed pop­u­la­tion, mod­ern infra­struc­ture, strate­gic loca­tion, rich bio­di­ver­si­ty, and attrac­tive invest­ment incen­tives [6].

Brunei has been pri­or­i­tiz­ing var­i­ous clus­ters such as Halal, busi­ness ser­vices, tech­nol­o­gy and cre­ative indus­try and tourism. At the same time, Brunei is com­mit­ted to sup­port local enter­pris­es.  Small and medi­um enter­prise (SMEs) is an essen­tial com­po­nent in achiev­ing Brunei Vision 2035.  Since 2018, the gov­ern­ment has been work­ing close­ly with the pri­vate sec­tor. Brunei suc­cess­ful­ly moved up from rank 108th to 56th out of 191 (Brunei Darus­salam Key Indi­ca­tors 2018) economies in the past 4 years. Darus­salam Enter­prise (DARe), along 4 with the sup­port of the gov­ern­ment has intro­duced var­i­ous incen­tives for local entre­pre­neurs. Some exam­ples are Indus­try Busi­ness Acad­e­my, Start­up Boot­camp, and Micro Busi­ness Boot­camp. These incen­tives have shown a pos­i­tive change in Brunei econ­o­my with gen­er­a­tion of over 400 job oppor­tu­ni­ties cre­at­ed for locals [7].

Brunei Darus­salam has made a sev­er­al ini­tia­tives and has made a strat­e­gy devel­op­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties away from oil and gas. These strate­gies also stat­ed in achiev­ing Brunei 2035 (Wawasan Brunei 2035) where one of the nation­al strate­gies is local busi­ness devel­op­ment strat­e­gy. This will enhance oppor­tu­ni­ties for local small and medi­um sized enter­prise (SMEs) as well as enable Brunei Malays to achieve lead­er­ship in busi­ness and indus­try by devel­op­ing greater com­pet­i­tive strength [8].

Research Problem 

It is ratio­nal to assume that high unem­ploy­ment growth in Brunei is asso­ci­at­ed with an increas­ing num­ber of job seek­ers in Brunei since job seek­ers demand for more job avail­abil­i­ty espe­cial­ly in the gov­ern­ment sec­tor as well as pri­vate sec­tions because of the future job secu­ri­ty. In addi­tion to the pre­cious rea­son, why there is a high rate of unem­ploy­ment par­tic­u­lar­ly in youth, is because they have a high­er lev­el of uncer­tain­ty get­ting into the labor mar­ket and this can have a huge impact on the indi­vid­u­als, com­mu­ni­ties, and economies. It is observed that major­i­ty of job seek­ers are still wait­ing for gov­ern­ment posi­tions since the men­tal­i­ty of grad­u­ates, for exam­ple, is still “there are no jobs for me after this” which clear­ly indi­cates how many feel that their edu­ca­tion enti­tles them to job secu­ri­ty. “Those who do go into the pri­vate sec­tor, see it is a place for get­ting expe­ri­ence and train­ing stage or tem­po­rary solu­tion until a gov­ern­ment vacan­cy offered [9].

The title of this study was cho­sen because the researcher felt it was very impor­tant in know­ing the job oppor­tu­ni­ties for grad­u­ates in gen­er­al and specif­i­cal­ly for UNISSA Halal Sci­ence grad­u­ates not just in gov­ern­ment sec­tor but also in pri­vate sec­tor such as being a Halal entre­pre­neur. The repet­i­tive ques­tions will be asked after grad­u­at­ing which is employ­ment. It is impor­tant to acknowl­edge we and the oth­ers that employ­ment is not just in gov­ern­ment but also in anoth­er pri­vate sec­tor such as being an entrepreneur.

Objectives of the Study

Based on the above state­ment, this research focus­es on the fol­low­ing: To under­stand the dif­fer­ence between entre­pre­neur and Halal entre­pre­neur. To iden­ti­fy some job oppor­tu­ni­ties for UNISSA Grad­u­ates of Halal Sci­ence as Halal entre­pre­neur. To explore impor­tance of Halal entre­pre­neur­ship in the devel­op­ment of coun­try as means to reduce youth unem­ploy­ment in Brunei.

Literature Review

Entre­pre­neur­ship

The term entre­pre­neur­ship stems from the French word entre­pre­neur that sug­gests “to accom­plish some­thing” or “to embrace”. It is an imag­i­na­tive activ­i­ty that relies upon the abil­i­ty to make and set up some­thing from about noth­ing. Many schol­ars in entre­pre­neur­ship explained busi­ness entre­pre­neur­ship as fac­ing chal­lenges, respond­ing to cir­cum­stances, bear­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, and cre­at­ing a bal­ance between demand and sup­ply in the mar­ket. At the same time, entre­pre­neur­ship is ascribed as an effi­cient head­way, which grasps in the pur­pose­ful and arranged out­look for changes, and it is the coher­ent per­cep­tion of the open oppor­tu­ni­ties where such changes add to finan­cial and social advance­ment. Regard­ing this, many schol­ars have char­ac­ter­ized entre­pre­neur­ship as the busi­ness foun­da­tions that are coor­di­nat­ed to accom­plish a few objec­tives towards social, cul­tur­al, mon­e­tary, and insti­tu­tion­al through the activ­i­ties of an indi­vid­ual or a group of individuals.

Halal­pre­neur­ship

Entre­pre­neur­ship is an impor­tant aspect of life which is also insep­a­ra­ble from Islam where it is per­ceived as Halal­pre­neur­ship. The scope of Halal­pre­neur­ship is with­in the Shari’ah (Aqi­dah, Fiqh, Akhlaq) which ensures that its activ­i­ties do not devi­ate from the guide­lines of Islam. In Islam, Halal­pre­neur­ship is per­ceived as the role of Khal­i­fah (Caliph) on the earth. The mis­sion of Khal­i­fah is to wor­ship Allah Sub­hanahu Wa Taala (SWT) and to devel­op and pros­per the world. Such a role implies the actions of entre­pre­neur­ship con­tribut­ing to the good and pros­per­i­ty of soci­ety, the world and human­i­ty [5].

The term Halal­pre­neur­ship is recent­ly being used in the fields of the glob­al Halal indus­try that con­nects Halal advance­ment with busi­ness prac­tices through Halal­pre­neur­ial activ­i­ties. This includes the capac­i­ty and capa­bil­i­ty, exer­cis­es, and activ­i­ties seek­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties and devel­op­ing busi­ness estab­lish­ment. The pro­ce­dure of cre­ativ­i­ty and inno­va­tion in Halal­pre­neur­ship is com­plex. How­ev­er, this phe­nom­e­non is sig­nif­i­cant­ly impor­tant to be under­stood for Halal­pre­neur­ial devel­op­ment. The con­cept of Halal­pre­neur­ship is based on Maqasid-al-Shari’ah which is to pro­tect reli­gion, life, lin­eage, wealth, and intel­lect [10].

Entre­pre­neur

Entre­pre­neur is a deriv­a­tive of the French verb entre­pre­neur; that means lit­er­al­ly to “under­take”.  The Ger­man equiv­a­lent, unternehmer, close­ly trans­lates to own­er-man­ag­er (Druck­er, 1985)[11].  Druck­er described an entre­pre­neur as some­one who search­es for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.

Halal Entre­pre­neur

The term was used by Moha Asri Abdul­lah, Inter­na­tion­al Insti­tute for Halal Research and Train­ing (INHART), Inter­na­tion­al Islam­ic Uni­ver­si­ty Malaysia (IIUM in a talk on “Halal­pre­neurs: Real­i­ties and Oppor­tu­ni­ties”. The insti­tute has recent­ly pro­duced a book on this top­ic enti­tled “Halal Entre­pre­neur­ship” fund­ed by the Inter­na­tion­al Insti­tute of Islam­ic Thought (IIIT), Malaysia. The book pro­vides the con­cept and def­i­n­i­tion of Halal­pre­neur­ship. The term has also been used imply­ing to entre­pre­neur­ship in the Halal indus­try by Glob­al Islam­ic Econ­o­my (GIE) report-2018. Any Mus­lim indi­vid­ual con­duct­ing entre­pre­neur­ial busi­ness in the glob­al Halal indus­try with the objec­tive of pro­duc­ing only Halal prod­ucts and ser­vices and main­tains his or her busi­ness con­duct in a Shari’ah-compliant way is called a Halal­pre­neur. How­ev­er, accord­ing to Islam­ic schol­ars, non-Mus­lims can also be involved in the fields of the halal indus­try and become Halal­pre­neurs giv­en the con­di­tion that they com­ply with Maqasid-al-Shari’ah.

Job oppor­tu­ni­ties for Youth Grad­u­ates as entrepreneur 

Abdul­lah and Azam [12] includ­ed that Halal­pre­neurs have poten­tial oppor­tu­ni­ties in the mar­ket of the trav­el indus­try to meet the faith-based needs that include Halal food, prayer facil­i­ties, water usage friend­ly toi­lets, Ramadan ser­vices and facil­i­ties, Halal spa, gen­der-seg­re­gat­ed swim­ming pool and gym­na­si­um, assur­ance of elim­i­na­tion of any non- Halal activ­i­ty, recre­ation­al activ­i­ties with pri­va­cy, Mus­lim friend­ly tour guide, etc. 

No doubt, the entre­pre­neur­ship can be one of the ini­tia­tives for the youth to explore their tal­ents and at same time in busi­ness start-ups and it is the best way to pro­vide them employ­ment and oppor­tu­ni­ty to earn income.  Evi­dence sug­gest­ed by Free­man and Wise [13] states that most youth have dif­fi­cul­ties in get­ting and exit­ing employ­ment. This prob­lem is not because of a lack of desire to get a job but the abil­i­ty of the unem­ployed to find one. Job short­age could be the deter­mi­nant in the changes of respon­sive­ness to employ­a­bil­i­ty demand. The main deter­mi­nants of youth 6 unem­ploy­ment come from three fac­tors: aggre­gate demand, youth wages and size of youth labour force [14].

Syariena [7] list­ed suc­cess­ful alum­ni of UBD Incu­ba­tion which is now run­ning as full-time busi­ness own­ers. Not only lim­it­ed to alum­ni of UBD Incu­ba­tion but there are a lot of UBD grad­u­ates that were suc­cess­ful in becom­ing self-employed for full-time oper­a­tion after grad­u­at­ing from UBD with the help of DARe. Feznchip is found­ed by local Bruneians where they offer the clas­sic taste of UK food. One of the employ­ees from Feznchip is from UBD PhD grad­u­ates that were strug­gling to find a job and with the new­ly oper­at­ed busi­ness of Feznchip.  Kotak Senyum is also run by UBD grad­u­ate cou­ples as their full-time employ­ment. With their inno­v­a­tive busi­ness ideas, they man­aged to open their own office, book­ing web­site and have a team of full and part-time employ­ees. ZZ scarves are one of the uni­ver­si­ty projects that turned into a full-time busi­ness, also run by UBD grad­u­ates, design­ing own scarves as indi­vid­ual projects in UBD. At the point where the scarves that were print­ed man­aged to be sold more than a 100 and bring­ing in accu­mu­la­tive sales for about BND$4,000. All these new start-up busi­ness­es even­tu­al­ly helped the Brunei econ­o­my with job cre­ation and self-earn­ing [7].

Impor­tance of Halal entrepreneurship

The high unem­ploy­ment rate among grad­u­ates espe­cial­ly in devel­oped coun­tries is not a new issue but world­wide.  Many coun­tries have tak­en an action toward unem­ploy­ment issues through vagar­i­ous mea­sures most recent­ly via entre­pre­neur­ship since it is an essen­tial tool in con­tribut­ing to a country’s eco­nom­ic growth. It must be regard­ed as an impor­tant means in shift­ing the econ­o­my effi­cient­ly and effec­tive­ly to yield a high productivity. 

Some coun­tries might expe­ri­ence high eco­nom­ic growth with the entre­pre­neur­ship accliv­i­ties, and some may expe­ri­ence slow eco­nom­ic growth and unem­ploy­ment rate as a poten­tial con­se­quence of eco­nom­ic restruc­ture. The rela­tion­ship between unem­ploy­ment and entre­pre­neur­ship can poten­tial­ly be explained by researcher obser­va­tion and found that unem­ploy­ment will be low­er when there is an increase in entre­pre­neur­ship. Inter­est­ing, we found that when ris­ing unem­ploy­ment rates in cer­tain coun­tries, it will moti­vate peo­ple to be more enter­pris­ing (or to engage with entre­pre­neur­ship). This obser­va­tion sup­port­ed by the study of Syariena [7] who found the inter­vie­wees agreed that entre­pre­neur­ship activ­i­ties are impor­tant for the devel­op­ment of Brunei Darus­salam. In a way, it helps Brunei to diver­si­fy their econ­o­my oth­er than oil and gas. Being more enter­pris­ing can help Brunei to low­er their unem­ploy­ment rate because it can help cre­ate oth­er jobs for the coun­try.  How­ev­er, entre­pre­neur­ship is also risky due to the unsta­ble con­di­tion when first start­ed and the unat­trac­tive salaries which may cause more youth to divert away from being self-employed.

Materials and Methods

This research used main­ly a qual­i­ta­tive approach which draw from both pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary data. The pri­ma­ry data and infor­ma­tion were col­lect­ed through inter­views with local entre­pre­neurs in dif­fer­ent busi­ness­es. The sec­ondary data was col­lect­ed from the books and arti­cles. Fur­ther­more, the inter­view ses­sion took place in ear­ly June to eight local entre­pre­neurs in dif­fer­ent busi­ness­es.  Five of the select­ed youth have been oper­at­ing their busi­ness for more than two years in their busi­ness lifes­pan. All inter­vie­wees have dif­fer­ent entre­pre­neur­ial back­grounds vary­ing from food and bev­er­ages to ser­vices as shown in Table 1. The oth­er three of the entre­pre­neurs have been in the busi­ness for over 1 year. Table 1 below shows the details of the select­ed entre­pre­neurs dur­ing the inter­view ses­sion with their edu­ca­tion­al back­ground and Table 2 shows the ques­tions. After com­plet­ing the inter­view ses­sion, all data sets will be ana­lyzed with qual­i­ta­tive methods.

Table 1. Infor­mant Busi­ness back­ground (The infor­mants are cat­e­go­rized as E1 until E8).

Cat­e­go­ry	Edu­ca­tion­al Background	Name of Business
Food and Bev­er­ages: Study Cafe	Bach­e­lor of Busi­ness Admin in Uni­ver­si­ty Brunei Darussalam	Learn­ers Bar
Foods and spaghetti	Mas­ter of Halal Sci­ence in Uni­ver­si­ty Islam Sul­tan Sharif Ali	Byna­jibahyus­sof
Cakes	Bach­e­lor of Busi­ness Man­age­ment in Uni­ver­si­ty Brunei Darussalam	Baked by Nisa
Bar­beque Sauce and cookies	Bach­e­lor of chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing in Uni­ver­si­ty Tech­nol­o­gy Brunei	Hanani DesSavour
Cos­met­ics: Pro­vid­ing raw mate­r­i­al for DIY health and beau­ty products	Bach­e­lor of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing in Uni­ver­si­ty Tech­nol­o­gy Brunei	Kreative
Agent of Obsess cosmetic	Bach­e­lor of Biol­o­gy in Uni­ver­si­ty Brunei Darussalam	Maria Taruna
Arts and Enter­tain­ment, Appar­el and Clothing	Busi­ness	Elzouq
Ser­vices: SSSRU (Ugama’s cer­tifi­cate) clinics	UNISSA’s grad­u­ates	Che’gu Core

Table 2. Ques­tions for Interview

Dur­ing inter­view ses­sions, it will cov­er ques­tions such as:

What do you under­stand about the con­cept of entrepreneurship?

How do you define an entre­pre­neur and Halal entre­pre­neur? Are there any dif­fer­ences? And if yes, what are they?

Did your back­ground edu­ca­tion help you in becom­ing an entrepreneur?

List down the pros and cons of doing entrepreneurship?

Is there any poten­tial job oppor­tu­ni­ty as Halal entre­pre­neur for UNISSA grad­u­ates of Halal Sci­ence? And what are they?

In your opin­ion, are Halal entre­pre­neurs impor­tant for the devel­op­ment of our coun­try? Why?

Do you think being Halal entre­pre­neur helps in reduc­ing unem­ploy­ment of UNISSA grad­u­ates of Halal Sci­ence in Brunei? In what way it helps?

Dur­ing the qual­i­ta­tive method approach, the inter­view ses­sion should be done face-to-face with the select­ed inter­vie­wees. How­ev­er, due to pre­vent closed inter­ac­tion because of the world pan­dem­ic of Covid-19 and lim­i­ta­tion of time hence inter­view ses­sions were done through social media plat­forms instead, such as Insta­gram and What­sApp. Both entre­pre­neurs pro­vide a great depth of infor­ma­tion and details. In a study done by Opde­nakker [15]. He stat­ed that the select­ed inter­viewed par­tic­i­pants will pro­vide great infor­ma­tion details about them­selves via a dis­closed envi­ron­ment. He also agreed that this act is called self ‑dis­clo­sure which they reveal their per­son­al infor­ma­tion by their own will­ing­ness. Through this method, researchers can get hon­est respons­es giv­en by the select­ed inter­vie­wees. Due to the anonymi­ty between researchers and the inter­vie­wees, the inter­vie­wees can express their hon­est think­ing and respons­es [7].

Researcher also used library research which plays an impor­tant role in the suc­cess of a study as a researcher’s ref­er­ence. Researchers cite any data or infor­ma­tion relat­ed to the title of researcher through read­ing mate­ri­als such as books in library of UNISSA also got infor­ma­tion the articles.

Results and Discussion

Results

As men­tioned ear­li­er, this study is aimed at to under­stand the dif­fer­ence between entre­pre­neur and Halal entre­pre­neur, to what extend are there job oppor­tu­ni­ties for UNISSA Halal Sci­ence Grad­u­ates as Halal entre­pre­neur and to explore the impor­tance of Halal entre­pre­neur­ship in the devel­op­ment of coun­ty and how can it help reduce youth unem­ploy­ment in Brunei. To this paper, only eight of local entre­pre­neurs will be dis­cussed and the results will be accord­ing to the objec­tives of the study. The infor­mants are cat­e­go­rized as E1 until E8.

Under­stand the dif­fer­ence between entre­pre­neur and Halal entrepreneur

Out of eight infor­mants, sev­en of them are agreed that there is a dif­fer­ent between entre­pre­neur and Halal entre­pre­neur. Only one infor­mant from Obsess­es agent dis­agreed the dif­fer­ence. From sev­en infor­mant, three of them added the sim­i­lar­i­ty of entre­pre­neur and Halal entre­pre­neur in terms of busi­ness own­er and prof­it loss.

E1, a local food entre­pre­neur that has grad­u­at­ed from Uni­ver­si­ty Sul­tan Sharif Ali in Halal Sci­ence and been doing her busi­ness for 2 years said that there was a beau­ty in entre­pre­neur­ship that can make peo­ple impressed such as it would build social rela­tion­ship. The researcher has inter­viewed her regard­ing the entre­pre­neur and Halal entre­pre­neur, and she answered.

For me, both are two dif­fer­ent things. If entre­pre­neur, they focus more on get­ting prof­it, they sell any­thing they want. If they get the prof­it. In this case, entre­pre­neur have larg­er market/​consumer. As for Halal entre­pre­neur, they focus more about the qual­i­ty, clean­li­ness of their prod­ucts. They take care of it from A to Z (raw to fin­ished prod­uct). In terms of mar­ket, Halal entre­pre­neur is the same as entre­pre­neur, non-Mus­lim con­sumer can also buy it. Dif­fer­ent from entre­pre­neur.  Peo­ple (espe­cial­ly the Mus­lim) need to check, be par­tic­u­lar before buy­ing it. 

E1 agreed that entre­pre­neur is dif­fer­ent from Halal entre­pre­neur in terms of what, why and how they take care of their prod­ucts. Halal entre­pre­neurs are more cau­tious in assur­ing the con­cept of Halalan Thayy­iban of the prod­ucts and along the process of mak­ing them. E1’s respond is sim­i­lar with the next infor­mants E2 which was a local entre­pre­neur that run the first study cafe for a year in Brunei Darus­salam and she was a Bach­e­lor of Busi­ness admin in Uni­ver­si­ty Brunei Darus­salam and E3, food entre­pre­neur with busi­ness man­age­ment back­ground with busi­ness expe­ri­enced for 3 years.

E2: The dif­fer­ence between both, one of it is the way how they con­duct­ed the busi­ness. Halal entre­pre­neurs are more cau­tious. Assur­ing the food are Halal, the chem­istry thing on the prod­uct also needs to be Halal and so on. The prod­uct itself did not harm the user or con­sumers. Make sure the way they con­duct­ed busi­ness is not against Islam­ic law.

E3: There’s a dif­fer­ent between those two. As entre­pre­neur­ship can be any­thing, clothes, pro­vid­ing ser­vices, foods, enter­tain­ment based on mar­ket demands but Halal entre­pre­neur­ship is a busi­ness that revolves around Halal prod­ucts or ser­vices that fol­lowed Shari­ah law.

E4, infor­mant which doing art and appar­el busi­ness and had expe­ri­enced in that field for 6 years said that there is sim­i­lar­i­ty between entre­pre­neur and Halal entre­pre­neur in terms of their con­cepts but dif­fer­ent in terms of what are they sell­ing as stat­ed below.

E4: An entre­pre­neur and Halal entre­pre­neur have a same con­cept which is prof­it and loss, but Halal entre­pre­neur has more con­cern about Halal prod­uct includ­ed where it is from and what is bet­ter to consume.

The next infor­mant E5 which are cos­met­ic entre­pre­neur for more than 2 years with non-busi­ness back­ground had same opin­ion with infor­mant E4 which is entre­pre­neurs and Halal entre­pre­neurs would be faced with prof­it and loss. Entre­pre­neur is a busi­nessper­son in gen­er­al and spe­cif­ic per­son for Halal entre­pre­neur, this was stat­ed from infor­mant E6 which is a food entrepreneur. 

E5: Entre­pre­neur is sole trad­er that will­ing to take the finan­cial risk to make some prof­its. Halal entre­pre­neur- same but more spe­cif­ic-sell­ing prod­ucts or ser­vices that is Halal and com­ply with Shari­ah law. 

E6: Entre­pre­neur is a busi­nessper­son in gen­er­al, but Halal entre­pre­neur is those busi­nessper­sons that imple­ment­ed Shari­ah law through­out their business.

In gen­er­al, entre­pre­neur­ship is any­thing relat­ed with busi­ness that can gen­er­ate income. The main goal of a busi­ness entre­pre­neur­ship is to make mon­ey. But Halal entre­pre­neur­ship is specif­i­cal­ly doing the busi­ness with what Islam had taught.

The state­ment of above infor­mants con­tra­dict­ed with infor­mant E7 which is cos­met­ic entre­pre­neur with non-busi­ness back­ground. She dis­agreed that there is a dif­fer­ent between entre­pre­neur and Halal entre­pre­neur because in her opin­ion, both are same.

E7: In my prospec­tive their both same, what they pro­vide or what prod­uct they pro­duce to the peo­ple are the one that define ‘type’ of entrepreneurs.

The last infor­mant, E8 as a pio­neer in SSSRU clin­ics who runs tuition busi­ness and con­sists of 6 mem­bers that have grad­u­at­ed from Uni­ver­si­ty Sul­tan Sharif Ali said that.

An entre­pre­neur is the one who starts their own busi­ness ven­ture in hopes of gen­er­at­ing prof­it and know­ing the risks of his loss­es. They are extreme­ly dri­ven with their goal to suc­ceed, and we can say that they pri­or­i­tize their busi­ness val­ue over mon­ey. Halal entre­pre­neur or some say it Halal­pre­neur, is the sub-cat­e­go­ry of entre­pre­neurs. There are a lot of types of entre­pre­neurs; Mus­limpre­neur, Wom­en­pre­neur and Halal­pre­neur. Halal entre­pre­neur is hold­ing on to Maqasid Syari­ah when con­duct­ing busi­ness. They pri­or­i­tize the pub­lic inter­est for the ben­e­fit of the ummah by ensur­ing to obtain Halal cer­tifi­cates for their prod­ucts and fol­low­ing the Halal stan­dard and com­ply­ing with the Halal policy.

Accord­ing to E8, Halal entre­pre­neur is the sub-cat­e­go­ry of entre­pre­neurs. They also includ­ed the same state­ment as major­i­ty of infor­mants which Halal entre­pre­neur is con­duct­ing their busi­ness­es that fol­lowed Shari­ah law and they also added that Halal entre­pre­neurs pri­or­i­tize the ben­e­fit of the ummah by ensur­ing to obtain Halal stan­dards and Halal pol­i­cy for the prod­ucts or ser­vices. In researcher opin­ion, E8 is a per­son with type of high aware­ness on Halal prod­ucts. Accord­ing to E8, there are a lot of types of entre­pre­neurs such as Mus­limpre­neur and Wom­en­pre­neur. His state­ment con­tra­dict­ed with Schumpeter’s state­ment on book of Entre­pre­neur­ial Oppor­tu­ni­ty which point­ed out that entre­pre­neurs are prime movers of eco­nom­ic change. They are inno­va­tors, intro­duc­ing new goods and new pro­duc­tion meth­ods, these are an inno­va­tor, a pio­neer who intro­duces new goods and new ways of doing things. Clydes­dale [16]. Accord­ing to him, there are vari­eties type of entre­pre­neurs such as pio­neer, imi­ta­tor, adap­tive imi­ta­tor, niche devel­op­er and follower.

To what extend are there job oppor­tu­ni­ties for UNISSA Grad­u­ates of Halal Sci­ence as halal entrepreneur

Out of 8, sev­en infor­mants agreed that there are plen­ty of job oppor­tu­ni­ties as Halal entre­pre­neur for UNISSA Halal Sci­ence grad­u­ates. Only one infor­mant was doubt in answer­ing this ques­tion, which was from E5, said that.

E5: Not sure, but maybe in pro­duc­tion industry.

E5 which is a local cos­met­ic entre­pre­neur that pro­vid­ed raw mate­r­i­al for DIY health and beau­ty prod­ucts. In my opin­ion, why she answered as stat­ed above because she was the one that expe­ri­enced in pro­duc­ing raw mate­ri­als, and yes, she was real­ly tak­ing care of the safe­ty and Halal­ness of the raw mate­ri­als. There­fore, UNISSA Halal Sci­ence grad­u­ates can be Halal pro­duc­er, and this is like E6’s answered. Accord­ing to E6’s respond, UNISSA Halal Sci­ence grad­u­ates could be a Halal pro­duc­er in vari­eties of sec­tors such as being Halal food and cos­met­ic producers.

E6: Yes of course, this may include halal food pro­duc­ers and entre­pre­neur. Halal cos­met­ics pro­duc­ers and entre­pre­neur. Halal health sup­ple­ments and a lot more.

It is a good oppor­tu­ni­ty for fresh grad­u­ate of Halal edu­ca­tion to secure their job in many Halal indus­tries both food and non-food indus­tries [1].  There­fore, Halal Sci­ence grad­u­ates could do busi­ness on appar­el, open­ing up Mus­limah friend­ly wear and hair-salon, ppro­duc­ing and sell­ing what Mus­lim need such as tayam­mum (ready pack).  This would make eas­i­er to the buy­ers to use the prod­ucts. Below was the answer from infor­mant E1, to her, of course there are job oppor­tu­ni­ties as Halal entre­pre­neur for UNISSA Halal Science. 

E1: Of course, there is, for Halal entre­pre­neur, you can open a Mus­limah friend­ly hair salon, sell­ing what Mus­lim need for exam­ple for tayam­mum (ready pack), ser­vice menyertu.

The next infor­mant E3 said that. 

E3: Yes, for exam­ple pro­vid­ing Halall food or ser­vices such as let­ting peo­ple know where they can get Halal food from oth­er coun­tries or Mus­limah fash­ion is also an oppor­tu­ni­ty they can get into.

Accord­ing to infor­mant E3, UNISSA Halal Sci­ence also could be Halal ser­vice entre­pre­neur such as let­ting peo­ple know where they can get Halal food or ser­vices such as mas­sage etc. For exam­ple, open­ing busi­ness in guid­ing tourists, mas­sage ser­vice that sep­a­rat­ed men and women. Abdul­lah and Azam [12] includ­ed that Halal­pre­neurs have poten­tial oppor­tu­ni­ties in the mar­ket of the trav­el indus­try to meet the faith-based needs that include Halal food, prayer facil­i­ties, water usage friend­ly toi­lets, Ramadan ser­vices and facil­i­ties, Halal spa, gen­der-seg­re­gat­ed swim­ming pool and gym­na­si­um, assur­ance of elim­i­na­tion of any non-Halal activ­i­ty, recre­ation­al activ­i­ties with pri­va­cy, Mus­lim friend­ly tour guide, etc. 

Halal entre­pre­neurs also need­ed in agri­cul­ture sec­tor such as pro­duc­ing, sell­ing, and dis­trib­ut­ing Halal fer­til­iz­ers. This proved by infor­mant E4.

E4: Yes, nowa­days Halal entre­pre­neur is need­ed, such as food dis­trib­u­tors, cos­met­ics dis­trib­u­tors, farmer and in agriculture.

The next infor­mants E2 and E7 said that we can imple­ment our knowl­edge every­where and being Halal sci­ence grad­u­ate does not restrict to work at any places.

E2: What­ev­er knowl­edge we gain, we can imple­ment it every­where if you know how to imple­ment it. If UNISSA stu­dent can con­vince what they can con­tribute, they can.

E7: Yes, because hav­ing to grad­u­ate Halal sci­ence does not restrict­ed them. They can work at any places.

As infor­mants E2 and E7 men­tioned above, we all can imple­ment the knowl­edge we gain in every­where. There­fore, we must use and apply it wise­ly. As Chief of Human Resource in Job  Cen­tre Brunei advised to the researcher that we can imple­ment our knowl­edge to any jobs, Halal  sci­ence grad­u­ates does not mean have to work as a Halal audi­tor or super­vi­sor in gov­ern­men­tal  sec­tor but also can open­ing up a busi­ness, She added to not just expect to work in our field but  also tried to stayed away from the com­fort zone because there will always be oppor­tu­ni­ties for  all of us (Chief of Human Resource in Job Cen­tre Brunei, 2021). This is a bit like infor­mant E8’s responds.

E8: There is always an oppor­tu­ni­ty for those who want to become entre­pre­neurs if they have a strong will and moti­va­tion to strive in the busi­ness area.  Halal indus­try is get­ting big­ger over time, as we have seen in Thai­land, Malaysia, and Indone­sia. Brunei is cur­rent­ly doing the same, expand­ing Halal mar­ket inside and out­side the coun­try. We are all aware that Brunei is aim­ing to become a Glob­al Halal Hub coun­try, there­fore the job oppor­tu­ni­ty will always be there if the Halal mar­ket indus­try is being prioritized.

The impor­tance of Halal entre­pre­neur­ship in the devel­op­ment of coun­try as means to reduce youth unem­ploy­ment in Brunei.

To answer the third objec­tive of this study, below are the informant’s responds:

E1: Of course, it is impor­tant, as it is one of the mech­a­nisms that helps to sta­bi­lize our country’s econ­o­my. As we all know, Halal is grow­ing rapid­ly nowa­days. More peo­ple have been expos­ing with Halal entre­pre­neurs. So, more peo­ple know, there will be more demand. If there is demand, then our econ­o­my will grow and that will con­tribute to our coun­try devel­op­ment. In Syaa Allah, with the knowl­edge and the busi­ness can ful­fil the need of soci­ety and mak­ing eas­i­er to oth­ers, it will help reduce the rate of unemployment. 

Accord­ing to infor­mant E1, an entre­pre­neur­ship helps to sta­bi­lize the devel­op­ment of the coun­try by pro­duc­ing and pro­vid­ing Halal food or ser­vices. Halal indus­try has become one of the most rapid­ly devel­op­ing fields which spreads glob­al­ly. This proved by Thom­son Reuters, Dinar Stan­dard, and Dubai Inter­na­tion­al Finan­cial Cen­tre on the paper of Deuraseh and Her­ad­hyak­sa [1] that has report­ed that the glob­al Halal mar­ket has emerged as a new growth sec­tor in the glob­al econ­o­my which has been esti­mat­ed to be worth around USD2.3 tril­lion (exclud­ing Islam­ic finance). In oth­er words, its grow­ing at an esti­mat­ed annu­al rate of 20%, the indus­try is val­ued at about USD560 bil­lion a year [1]. There­fore, there will be more demand, and this means grow­ing of econ­o­my and will con­tribute to the devel­op­ment of country. 

As Bau­mol [17]  stat­ed in paper of Sala­heldeen, Nazri and Bat­tour, he felt that the role of the entre­pre­neur is vital to eco­nom­ic growth.  Sala­heldeen, Nazri and Bat­tour [18]. Hence it will help in reduc­ing the rate of youth unem­ploy­ment in Brunei Darus­salam. There is sim­i­lar­i­ty opin­ion regard­ing the impor­tance of Halal entre­pre­neurs towards the devel­op­ment of the coun­try and reduc­tion of unem­ploy­ment rate among most infor­mants. Major­i­ty of them agreed that Halal entre­pre­neurs are impor­tant in devel­op­ing the coun­try and it helps in reduc­ing the youth unem­ploy­ment rate. For instance, Halal Sci­ence grad­u­ates have job oppor­tu­ni­ties in gov­ern­ment and pri­vate sec­tors such as Halal haram offi­cers, Halal super­vi­sor, Halal cos­met­ic pro­duc­er etc. This like infor­mants E4, E6 and E7’s answered.

E4: Halal entre­pre­neurs are impor­tant for devel­op­ment of our coun­try because it will affect soci­ety to have bet­ter life which pro­duc­ing a har­mo­ny envi­ron­ment that can devel­op a coun­try. Yes, it helps reduc­ing unem­ploy­ment of UNISSA grad­u­ates of Halal Sci­ence. They can fill the job oppor­tu­ni­ties in gov­ern­ment and pri­vates’ sec­tors, such as Halal haram offi­cers, food ven­dors, teach­ers and many more.

E6: Yes, it acts as a means of pro­vid­ing we with jobs or even open­ing a job oppor­tu­ni­ty for oth­er peo­ple and this will con­tribute to the devel­op­ment of this coun­try. Yes of course. As men­tioned above, being an entre­pre­neur is pro­vid­ing job for us.

E7: Yes, absolute­ly, as we are liv­ing in Mus­lim coun­try, prac­tic­ing Islam, we need more edu­cat­ed peo­ple like them to help oth­er entre­pre­neurs, so that Halal prod­ucts or ser­vices are mon­i­tored very well in this coun­try. Yes, absolute­ly, by pro­vid­ing them job oppor­tu­ni­ties that they are good at of course.

The next infor­mants E2 and E5 added that busi­ness with Islam­ic taught is the best way and con­sum­ing Halal prod­ucts is good for our body. 

E2: Yes, of course. We man­age our busi­ness based on 5 Maqasid Syari­ah as our foun­da­tion. Our busi­ness is focus on preser­va­tion of the intel­lect with the 4 oth­ers as our pure hold­ing focus togeth­er. This impor­tant. Busi­ness with Islam­ic taught is the best way. Yes, it is impor­tant for the devel­op­ment of coun­try. Yes, but we need to edu­cate more about Halal entre­pre­neur because it is important. 

E5: Yes, very impor­tant, since we are a Mus­lim coun­try, so every­thing needs to be Halal. Both prod­ucts and ser­vices. Not too sure but being Halal entre­pre­neur is a very good one because once every­one knows that you’re offer­ing Halal prod­ucts or ser­vices, peo­ple will sure­ly buy them, because Halal prod­ucts are good for our body accord­ing to Al Quran. If you’re to com­pare import­ed prod­ucts, some­times we are not too sure it its Halal or not. 

As Mus­lims, it is key to have faith in Allah and for our busi­ness­es to grow, this faith must be in place. It is men­tioned in the Quran.

O you who have believed, shall I guide you to a trans­ac­tion that will save you from a painful pun­ish­ment? [It is that] you believe in Allah and His Mes­sen­ger and strive in the cause of Allah with your wealth and your lives. That is best for you, if you should know.” (Al-Saff 61:10–11)

A major part of liv­ing life accord­ing to the Creator’s instruc­tions is imple­ment­ing a suit­able diet. Choos­ing whole­some food and avoid­ing the unwhole­some is essen­tial to good health. God says in the Quran,¹⁹

“Eat of the good things which We have pro­vid­ed for you.” (Quran 2:172)

“Eat of what is law­ful and whole­some on the earth.” (Quran 2:168)

The next infor­mant E8 answered.

E8: Def­i­nite­ly. Our neigh­bour­ing coun­try, Malaysia is one of the lead­ing coun­tries in Glob­al Halal Hub with so many Halal entre­pre­neurs devel­op­ing it. If Brunei is to become a Glob­al Halal Hub coun­try in the future, this will cre­ate a new mar­ket in busi­ness and attract for­eign investors to begin invest­ing in our ever-grow­ing Halal indus­try. Edu­ca­tion sec­tor will be widened, fac­to­ries will be built, unem­ploy­ment issues will be reduced and many more.

Accord­ing to him, yes, he was agree­ing that Halal entre­pre­neurs are impor­tant to the devel­op­ment of the coun­try. He proved with Malaysia as evi­dence of devel­op­ing coun­try with so many Halal entre­pre­neurs devel­op­ing it. Min­is­ter of Ener­gy, Man­pow­er and Indus­try of Brunei Darus­salam, Dato Seri Setia Dr Awang Haji Mat Suny bin Haji Mohd Hus­sein said that Halal indus­try in Brunei Darus­salam has con­tin­ued to improve. He not­ed that Brunei Darus­salam is cur­rent­ly ranked among the top 15 out of 73 coun­tries accord­ing to Thom­son Reuters’ Glob­al Islam­ic Econ­o­my Report for 2018–2019. It was their aspi­ra­tion that Brunei Darussalam’s Halal and Islam­ic sec­tor ris­es to become a leader in the glob­al Halal Indus­try and a renowned Halal Hub,” said the min­is­ter [19].

Discussion

Based on the inter­views, major­i­ty of the infor­mants knew and under­stand the dif­fer­ence between entre­pre­neur and Halal entre­pre­neur. How­ev­er, both were also hav­ing a sim­i­lar­i­ty in terms of gen­er­al def­i­n­i­tion which is to gen­er­ate income. Nur­deng Deuraseh, in sev­er­al times espe­cial­ly dur­ing his 101 Sem­i­nar: Become A Halal Halal­pre­neur on 15 May 2019 as well as in his moti­va­tion course for Halal Sci­ence stu­dents, clear­ly stress­es that any Mus­lim indi­vid­ual con­duct­ing entre­pre­neur­ial busi­ness in the glob­al Halal indus­try with the objec­tive of pro­duc­ing only Halal prod­ucts and ser­vices and main­tains his or her busi­ness con­duct in a Shari’ah-compliant way is called Halal­pre­neur [5].  Table 3 shows the sum­ma­ry of informant’s views in regard their under­stand­ing about dif­fer­ence between entre­pre­neur­ship and Halal entrepreneurship.

Table 3. sum­ma­ry of informant’s views in regard their under­stand­ing about dif­fer­ence between entre­pre­neur­ship and halal entrepreneurship.

Entre­pre­neur­ship	Aspect	Halal entre­pre­neur­ship
Based on coun­try law or profit	Con­cept	Based on Maqasid Shari’ah
What peo­ple want and makes profit	What?	Goods or ser­vices based on prod­uct pri­or­i­ties such as neces­si­ties, com­fort, lux­u­ry, not harm­ful and per­mis­si­ble (Halal) by Shari’ah
Effi­cien­cy and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty + desire to max­i­mize prof­it + any approach	How?	Effi­cien­cy and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty + prof­it + Halal process
Sole­ly based on mar­ket demand	For whom?	Mus­lim Ummah and humanity
Scope of knowl­edge is lim­it­ed to busi­ness knowl­edge only	Knowl­edge	Islam­ic and Busi­ness knowl­edge.  Non-Mus­lims can also be Halal­pre­neur based on the pub­lic inter­est (Masla­hah)
Prof­it	Moti­va­tion	Prof­it + ‘al-falah’ in this world and in the hereafter.
Cus­tomers, work­ers, sup­pli­ers, man­u­fac­tures, financiers, own­ers, com­mu­ni­ty, and people.	Stake­hold­er	Cus­tomers, work­ers, sup­pli­ers, man­u­fac­tures, financiers, own­ers, com­mu­ni­ty, Ummah (under the pre­view of Allah)

The researcher found that major­i­ty of the infor­mants talked about being a Halal entre­pre­neur was specif­i­cal­ly pro­duc­ing and sell­ing Halal prod­ucts such as foods that not con­tain­ing haram ingre­di­ents and ser­vices that have been done accord­ing to Islam­ic law. Halal entre­pre­neur­ship is beyond sell­ing and buy­ing Halal prod­ucts but also doing a right trans­ac­tion and hav­ing a good char­ac­ter­is­tic as a Halal entre­pre­neur. Accord­ing to Deuraseh [5], the busi­ness­es and entre­pre­neur­ial activ­i­ties should be done in accor­dance the maqasid shari­ah with the guide­lines pre­de­ter­mined in the Shari’ah law just like the oth­er reli­gious duties in Islam. This is impor­tant because the activ­i­ties may regard as ibadah if such employ­ment be per­formed with the sake of Islam notably with sin­cere inten­tion, com­ply with the Shari’ah in their jobs and do not ignore the spe­cif­ic wor­ship to Allah.

Sev­er­al reli­gious, moral, and eth­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics that are devel­oped from the Islam­ic val­ues, sig­nif­i­cant­ly dis­tin­guish­es Halal­pre­neurs from entre­pre­neurs. First­ly, Tak­wa is the most impor­tant attribute of Halal­pre­neurs that lead them towards suc­cess mak­ing lots of prof­its through their busi­ness activ­i­ties. In line with this faith, Halal becomes the pri­or­i­ty for Halal­pre­neurs. As Allah rec­om­mends con­sum­ing Halal (Al Quran 5:88) as well as earn Halal (Al-Quran 2:168).

And eat of what Allah has pro­vid­ed for you [which is] law­ful and good. And fear Allah, in whom you are believ­ers. (Al Quran, Al-Mai’dah 5:88).

O mankind, eat from what­ev­er is on earth [that is] law­ful and good and do not fol­low the foot­steps of Satan. Indeed, he is to you a clear ene­my. (Al-Quran, Baqarah 2:168)

Halal­pre­neurs are also expect­ed to behave respon­si­bly both for con­sump­tion and expense as busi­ness activ­i­ties are influ­enced by the pre­scrip­tion of not wast­ing by Allah (Al-Quran, Al- ‘Araf 7:31). 

O chil­dren of Adam, take your adorn­ment at every masjid, and eat and drink, but be not exces­sive. Indeed, He likes not those who com­mit excess.

Anoth­er char­ac­ter­is­tic of Halal­pre­neurs was men­tioned by Faizal [20]  in his study is to pri­or­i­tize wor­ship to Allah SWT which was also iden­ti­fied Sad­eq [21] based on Quran­ic vers­es where entre­pre­neur­ship (world­ly affairs) is encour­aged but after pray­ing. While pri­or­i­tiz­ing wor­ship to Allah SWT Halal­pre­neurs become trust­wor­thy in terms of both social and their busi­ness con­duct. Thus, trust­wor­thy is anoth­er char­ac­ter­is­tic of Halal­pre­neurs which has been men­tioned by the Prophet (PBUH) him­self. The Prophet (PBUH) encour­aged truth­ful and trust­wor­thy mer­chant to be with him togeth­er with mar­tyrs on the day of Judge­ment (Al Tir­mid­hi, 14: 1213).

Halal­pre­neurs are ‘khal­i­fah’ and have the respon­si­bil­i­ties to devel­op pros­per­i­ty and see busi­ness as part of ‘ibadah’ or good deed through the ful­fil­ment of fard­hu kifayah (com­mu­nal oblig­a­tion). While the West­ern busi­nessper­son is dri­ven towards enter­prise for the most part inde­pen­dent from any­one else intrigue and the long­ing for indi­vid­ual ben­e­fit, the Mus­lim busi­ness vision­ary begins a busi­ness with the expec­ta­tion of sat­is­fy­ing The Almighty Allah SWT. In oth­er words, a Halal­pre­neur regards his or her activ­i­ties as ibadah in the frame of earn­ing a Halal liv­ing Abdul­lah and Azam [4], as declared in Surah Al-Juma’ah:

O you who have believed, when [the adhan] is called for the prayer on the day of Jumu’ah [Fri­day], then pro­ceed to the remem­brance of Allah and leave trade. That is bet­ter for you if you only knew (9). And when the prayer has been con­clud­ed, dis­perse with­in the land, and seek from the boun­ty of Allah, and remem­ber Allah often that you may suc­ceed (10). (Al-Qur’an, 62: 9–10)

Results for the sec­ond objec­tive of this study, the researcher found that out of 8, sev­en infor­mants agreed that there are plen­ty of job oppor­tu­ni­ties as Halal entre­pre­neur for UNISSA Halal Sci­ence grad­u­ates. Major­i­ty of them did not only restrict the job oppor­tu­ni­ties on Halal food sec­tor but they have widened it such as in cos­met­ic sec­tor, cloth­ing, trav­el, and tourism etc. 

As infor­mants E2 and E7 men­tioned above, we all can imple­ment the knowl­edge we gain in every­where. There­fore, we must use and apply it wise­ly. As Chief of Human Resource in Job  Cen­tre Brunei advised to the researcher that we can imple­ment our knowl­edge to any jobs, Halal  sci­ence grad­u­ates does not mean have to work as a Halal audi­tor or super­vi­sor in gov­ern­men­tal  sec­tor but also can open­ing up a busi­ness, She added to not just expect to work in our field but  also tried to stayed away from the com­fort zone because there will always be oppor­tu­ni­ties for  all of us (Chief of Human Resource in Job Cen­tre Brunei, 2021). One of the infor­mants argued that atti­tude is impor­tant in busi­ness, not the field of the study. This stat­ed in the pre­vi­ous study titled Grad­u­ate employ­a­bil­i­ty through entre­pre­neur­ship [22].

Busi­ness Oppor­tu­ni­ties for Halal Entrepreneurs

The busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties for Halal­pre­neurs in the glob­al Halal indus­try can be real­ized by look­ing into the cur­rent mar­ket sta­tus of the dif­fer­ent fields of the Halal indus­try. There­fore, this sec­tion explores dif­fer­ent com­po­nents of the Halal indus­try where mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ties can be tapped by Halalpreneurs.

The cur­rent mar­ket val­ue of the glob­al Halal indus­try is esti­mat­ed to be US$4.7 tril­lion in 2018 includ­ing Islam­ic finance. This val­ue is pro­ject­ed to be US$6.9 tril­lion by 2024 with a CAGR growth of 6.2% [21]. The cur­rent mar­ket shares of dif­fer­ent fields of the Halal indus­try and their pro­jec­tion by 2024. It shows that after Islam­ic finance, the biggest sec­tor of the Halal indus­try is the Halal food and bev­er­age indus­try fol­lowed by mod­est fash­ion, media and recre­ation, Mus­lim friend­ly tourism, Halal phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, and Halal cosmetics.

Halal Food

The Glob­al Islam­ic Econ­o­my (GIE) report 2019/​2020 reveals that the Mus­lim spend­ing for Halal food and bev­er­age (F&B) in 2018 was US$1.3 bil­lion which has been pro­ject­ed to reach US$1.9 bil­lion by 2024. The hot growth sec­tors of the F&B mar­ket are Halal ingre­di­ents, and meat-based meals and snacks. Halal­pre­neurs can tap the oppor­tu­ni­ties in these sec­tors by their inno­v­a­tive Halal prod­ucts and explor­ing the gap in demand and sup­ply chain. The oppor­tu­ni­ty is fur­ther spread over Halal organ­ic and healthy foods, baby foods, emerg­ing exporters, online restau­rant book­ing, retail com­merce, social media mar­ket­ing, etc [1].

Mod­est Fashion

The Mus­lim mil­len­ni­als are the tar­get con­sumer in this sec­tor of the Halal indus­try. The mar­ket of mod­est fash­ion was esti­mat­ed to be US$283 bil­lion in 2018 and pro­ject­ed to reach US$402 bil­lion by 2024. Inno­v­a­tive Halal­pre­neurs can offer prod­ucts and ser­vices in this mar­ket in terms of mod­est lux­u­ry wears, mod­est sports­wear, fash­ion­wear for teens and tween, role mod­el­ling, blog­ging, etc.

Mus­lim Friend­ly Tourism

Oppor­tu­ni­ties in this sec­tor of the Halal indus­try can be real­ized by real­iz­ing the demand sup­ply side of the mar­ket. The demand for Mus­lim trav­ellers com­pris­es in terms of leisure, busi­ness, health­care, and reli­gious trav­el. On the oth­er side, the sup­ply side encom­pass­es trans­port (bus, train, flights, etc.), accom­mo­da­tion (hotels, vil­las, resorts, apart­ments, home­s­tays, etc.), F&B, trav­el agents, attrac­tions and activ­i­ties, Mus­lim friend­ly tour guides, and oth­ers relat­ed to trav­el and tourism. Such demand and sup­ply are based on Mus­lim faith-based needs. Halal­pre­neurs have poten­tial oppor­tu­ni­ties in the mar­ket of the trav­el indus­try to meet the faith-based needs that include Halal food, prayer facil­i­ties, water usage friend­ly toi­lets, Ramadan ser­vices and facil­i­ties, Halal spa, gen­der-seg­re­gat­ed swim­ming pool and gym­na­si­um, assur­ance of elim­i­na­tion of any non-Halal activ­i­ty, recre­ation­al activ­i­ties with pri­va­cy, Mus­lim friend­ly tour guide, etc.

Halal Cos­met­ics

Halal cos­met­ics and per­son­al care is anoth­er boom­ing mar­ket in the glob­al Halal indus­try. As of 2018, the Mus­lim spend­ing on Halal cos­met­ics was US$64 bil­lion which is expect­ed to grow US$95 bil­lion by 2024. The prod­uct base of this indus­try is expand­ed to per­son­al care prod­ucts, colour cos­met­ics (face, eyes, lips, nails), and fra­grance prod­ucts. Addi­tion­al­ly, these prod­uct lines are applied for hair care, face care, skin­care, and beau­ty care. Halal­pre­neurs can fea­si­bly tap the oppor­tu­ni­ties and gen­er­ate rev­enues in this mar­ket. Some hot sec­tors of this indus­try for growth in 2020 are Halal nail pol­ish, lip­stick, Halal face cream, scents, and per­fumes. The poten­tial growth has been iden­ti­fied through e‑commerce. The cos­met­ics and per­son­al care prod­ucts are even demand­ed by men as they are con­scious about their appear­ance as well. The Halal cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, i.e., the Halal logo gives a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage to the Halal­pre­neurs over com­peti­tors who do not have Halal cer­ti­fi­ca­tion [12].

Based on the inter­views, Major­i­ty of the infor­mants agreed that Halal entre­pre­neur­ship is impor­tant in devel­op­ment of the coun­try, and it helps in reduc­ing the unem­ploy­ment rate.  In terms of what Halal entre­pre­neur­ship helps the growth of econ­o­my are from many aspects.  With the exis­tence of Halal entre­pre­neurs will affects soci­ety to have bet­ter life which pro­duc­ing a har­mo­ny envi­ron­ment that can devel­op a coun­try. Increas­ing of Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion means increas­ing of Halal demand hence this would help the devel­op­ment of the country.

In the study of Syariena Abd Rah­man (2020) [7], she includ­ed the data regard­ing infor­mal sec­tors in Brunei and unem­ploy­ment rate. There is a sig­nif­i­cant increase in the num­ber of infor­mal sec­tors in Brunei main­ly from MSME. The huge jump from 2017 to 2018 indi­cates that more MSME are just start­ing up their busi­ness­es at this peri­od. Dur­ing the peri­od of 2017, Brunei Darus­salam has expe­ri­enced the high­est unem­ploy­ment rate in ASEAN that was 9.3%. Due the pres­sure of the unavail­abil­i­ty and dif­fi­cul­ties in find­ing a job dur­ing that time, more peo­ple are encour­aged to do start-up busi­ness. Maxwell [23] agreed that youth are pur­su­ing entre­pre­neur­ial activ­i­ties as their ways of self-earn­ing while cre­at­ing inno­v­a­tive ways to make a liv­ing. As a result, there is an improve­ment by the year 2018 in the num­ber of MSME record­ed in Brunei. The data that had been pro­vid­ed by MOFE (Min­istry of Finance and Econ­o­my) showed a pos­i­tive rela­tion­ship between unem­ploy­ment and entre­pre­neur­ship in Brunei Darus­salam. This find­ing shows the rel­e­vance between unem­ploy­ment and entre­pre­neur­ship as sup­port­ed by the pre­vi­ous stud­ies by Cue­to [24], when there is a high rate of unem­ploy­ment in a coun­try, any entre­pre­neur­ial activ­i­ty will result in a pos­i­tive impact. Cru­cial for a coun­try like Brunei to encour­age more youth involved in entre­pre­neur­ial activ­i­ties because it helps the coun­try to not be too depen­dent on oil and gas. It can be one of the alter­na­tive ways for Brunei to diver­si­fy and at the same time it helps main­tain the stan­dard of liv­ing in Brunei and even­tu­al­ly will pro­mote growth in GDP [7].

The Glob­al Entre­pre­neur­ship Mon­i­tor report con­firmed that Oppor­tu­ni­ty dri­ves most entre­pre­neurs in every econ­o­my, and many entre­pre­neurs strive to improve their lives through bet­ter income or more inde­pen­dence in their work. GEM also demon­strates the impact entre­pre­neurs have across the world by intro­duc­ing inno­va­tions into their soci­eties, cre­at­ing jobs, com­pet­ing glob­al­ly, and con­tribut­ing to the emer­gence and growth of indus­tries (Glob­al Entre­pre­neur­ship Mon­i­tor, 2018/​2019) [18].

Entre­pre­neur­ship has become one of the vital activ­i­ties for eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment. It is syn­ony­mous with job cre­ation, inno­va­tion, improve­ment in the soci­etal well-being and eco­nom­ic growth in devel­oped and devel­op­ing coun­tries alike [4].

Conclusions

Although Brunei Darus­salam is blessed with high GDP and pos­i­tive eco­nom­ic growth it does not guar­an­tee Brunei is free from eco­nom­ic prob­lems. With steady increase in its eco­nom­ic growth, the unem­ploy­ment rate in Brunei also increased at the same rate. How­ev­er, this issue can be poten­tial­ly reduced by encour­ag­ing the youth to par­tic­i­pate and be more involved in entre­pre­neur­ship and self-employ­ment. From the results above, it proved that there is a dif­fer­ent between entre­pre­neur and Halal entre­pre­neur. Major­i­ty of the infor­mants agreed that there are sev­er­al job oppor­tu­ni­ties as Halal entre­pre­neur for UNISSA Halal Sci­ence grad­u­ates such as open­ing food busi­ness, as Halal cos­met­ic pro­duc­er and sell­ing what Mus­lim need for exam­ple for tayam­mum (ready pack), ser­vice meny­er­tu (rit­u­al clean­ing). Halal entre­pre­neur­ship is impor­tant in the devel­op­ment of the coun­try, and it helps in reduc­ing unem­ploy­ment rate in Brunei Darus­salam. This research project can be extend­ed by look­ing at the cur­rent pan­dem­ic Covid-19 sit­u­a­tion where it forces most of the domes­tic busi­ness­es in Brunei Darus­salam to close their busi­ness­es but at the same time there is an increase in home-based busi­ness­es. It could help to explore fur­ther mea­sures of entre­pre­neur­ship roles in shap­ing and con­tribut­ing to Brunei Darussalam’s GDP when there are short­ages of sup­ply chains in most goods and ser­vices that are export­ed and import­ed in and out from Brunei. Explor­ing entre­pre­neur­ship dur­ing pan­dem­ic sit­u­a­tions will be a great exten­sion to this research project, to exam­ine fur­ther in terms of their moti­va­tion fac­tors in becom­ing self-enterprising.

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Copyright

© 2021 by the authors. This is an open access arti­cle dis­trib­uted under the Cre­ative Com­mons Attri­bu­tion License, which per­mits unre­strict­ed use, dis­tri­b­u­tion, and repro­duc­tion in any medi­um, pro­vid­ed the orig­i­nal work is prop­er­ly cited.