Review of the Literature and Survey of
Islamic Economics:
Islamic Faith's Elements :
Only Allah, the Worlds' Creator, Sustainer, and Provider of All Food, is deserving of praise. I ask God to
keep me safe from the evil in my spirit and the negative effects of my actions. May God guide us to
wisdom and insight, enlighten our way, and keep us from straying and endangering ourselves and
others.
Wealth and poverty are both equally difficult conditions to live in. This specifically indicates that
pursuing riches (for its own reason) is improper for a Muslim. Goals and deeds of persons of faith are
clearly distinguished from those of non-believers by their belief that life on Earth is only a test, acquiring
(material) riches during this life is a delusion (Q3:185, Q57:20), and true success is found on the Day of
Judgment.
Challenges for Our Project:
Through a chosen literature review, this study seeks to explain "Islamic Economics" to a Western (or
Western educated) audience. This project faces a number of difficult challenges. We now identify some
of the more significant ones in the hopes that a sympathetic reader may be able to avoid them after
being given a map.
Islam is a broad way of life; all actions in the personal, social, economic, and political arenas must be
focused on appeasing God. Western philosophy, in contrast, changed from a comparable unified vision
in the sixteenth century to a dualist one that characterises current Western thought. The secularisation
of political philosophy, according to Tawney (1926) in Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, was the most
significant of the intellectual shifts that brought about the modern era.
A holistic viewpoint will be unsettling to a Western audience used to keeping economics and religion in
separate boxes. The readers of this essay are the paper's apparent audience, but the author's true target
audience is God. This is made clear in the first portion of the study to draw attention to the peculiar
worldview that forms the basis of Islamic Economics.
Western social science methodology:
The concept that all knowledge should be established by observations and reason has its roots in
Western culture's rejection of God and religion. Although this positivist or empiricism philosophy has
been demonstrated to be insufficient to explain the current structures of scientific knowledge (The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions by T. S. Kuhn, 1970), it has had a significant impact on how social
sciences are conducted. Any "Islamic" science must acknowledge the Quran and the Prophet's method
as the source of all knowledge.
Power/Knowledge:
"All academic knowledge about India and Egypt is somehow tinted and imprinted with, violated by, the
gross political truth (that they were British colonies," argues Edward Said (1979) in Orientalism. Foucault
and his students extensively explored the relationships between power and knowledge, utilising precise
historical examples. Negative representations of Islam and Muslims have historically served some
Western political goals. For a comprehensive examination of one element, see Minou Reeves's (2003)
Muhammad in Europe: A Thousand Years of Western Myth-Making.
Imperialism and racism: One key aspect of European history is centuries of constant conflict among
European states. This gave rise to the European assumption that all contacts between various peoples
had to be hostile. This is reflected in countless fantasies of wars with aliens, as well as more
intellectually respectable recent works like Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations (1993) - the author
does not consider the possibilities of cooperation, tolerance, and mutually beneficial exchange between
different civilizations when gazing into his crystal ball.
Reasons for Hope: Despite the grim image depicted above, I think that the common human links that we
all have are strong enough to overcome any boundaries, given that the will and desire to communicate
is present. Because connecting across worldviews necessitates it, I shall make certain key components of
my own point of view obvious. As previously indicated, I do not think that "twain shall never meet"...
The distinctions between the East and the West are minor in comparison to our shared links.
Islamic Economics Demand and Supply
The theses of Maududi and Baqir Al-Sadr that the moral imperatives embedded in the Islamic Economic
system distinguished it from Capitalism and Communism were widely accepted by Muslims. More
extensive system articulation had to wait until the 1970s, when multiple forces generated the necessity.
With the formation of OPEC, Muslims gained significant political power and money. Because developed
financial markets existed solely in the West, this newly discovered money was invested in American and
European markets.
Fully Islamic Governments: For the purposes of this article, any government that is devoted to enforcing
Islamic Law (or Shari'ah) may be called a fully Islamic government. In the contemporary age, Iran, Saudi
Arabia, Sudan, and even Afghanistan may be regarded entirely Islamic for a brief period of time. Because
religious authorities implicitly agreed to keep political and economic dominance in the hands of the
Saud family in exchange for the application of Islamic law on social, familial, and personal levels, Saudi
Arabia's economic institutions have not been subjected to Islamic law. This scenario is gradually shifting
in reaction to changes in the Islamic world at large.
