Islamic Economics

The liberation of most Muslim-majority lands in the twentieth century from Western colonial powers paved the way for the emergence of Muslim revivalist movements across the world. As these movements upheld the belief that Islam must play a pivotal organizing role in all spheres of life in a Muslim society, the focus of attention of a number of prominent thinkers, scholars and academicians associated with these movements naturally turned to constructing new theoretical paradigms embodying what they regarded as Islam’s social, economic and political ideals. In the political realm, Western democracy was generally accepted, with some modifications though, as being in harmony with Islam. However, both capitalism and socialism, the economic systems prevalent at that time, were found to be in clash with Islam in their ideological and moral direction as well as in terms of the practical objectives they sought to achieve. In this context, economics received a great deal of attention, and a wide range of scholarly pursuits was undertaken by Muslim scholars with an eye to elaborate what they considered to be Islam’s moral and legal injunctions. The discourse initially focused on some distinctive features of the Shari[ah, as conventionally understood but, consequently, it took on the form, in theory at least, of a parallel academic discipline called “Islamic Economics”.