An Introduction to Islamic Economics

Coming to the ground situation of the world economy it deserves to be noted that the socialist economic experiment has miserably failed, while the capitalist economies, despite long strides in the fields of economic growth and technological transformation, are in the throes of an ever-deepening crisis. Modern economy has failed to ensure distributive justice, sustained growth and social harmony for a vast majority of mankind and is confronted at home and abroad with the menaces of prolonged recession, persistent unemployment, stagflation, unrestrained monetary expansions, staggering mountains of domestic and foreign debts, and co-existence of extremes of affluence and stark poverty within as well as among the community of nations. The link between moral values and economic judgement and behaviour, both at individual as well as governmental levels which had sustained humanity through the millenna, had been torn as under during the age of secular capitalistic ascendance and the economists as well as the common man are now trying to re-discover that missing ethical link.

'Islamic economics' represents a systematic effort by Muslim economists to cast a fresh look on the entire economic problem and methodology and come up with fresh solutions to old and persisting problems. This book aims at showing the contours of an Islamic economy. Its main theme is that the neo-elassical economics which has fashioned the present-day world has outlived its utility. Its approach is narrow, its assumptions are unrealistic, and its strategies inhuman. It has landed humanity into an abyss of problems. If , human thinking does not transcend the basic framework of neo-classical economics, the future of man on this globe is pretty bleak. In this background, the Islamic economic precepts provide a ray of hope. The present book invites the reader to cast an objective look at the principles of Islamic economics and perceive their potential. The book addresses both the common reader and the professional economist trained in the West.