What do You Know about Islamic Economics?

What are the Greatest Obstacles?

The greatest obstacle on which many people rely in rejecting the concept of the Islamic economic system stemmed from the latter’s inability to distinguish between the science of economics and the economic doctrine.

Whenever those who have not had the opportunity to differentiate between the science and the doctrine hear someone saying that there are economics in Islam, they soon retort: “How can there be economics in Islam when we cannot find researches by Muslim economists on par with Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and others?

Islam did not tell us anything about the law of crop underproduction, nor the laws of availability and demand, nor has it brought forth a law similar to that of the iron law of wages, nor has it produced a theory regarding the analysis and scientific study of the value as was done by the scientists of economics.

How can we be required to believe in the existence of ‘Islamic economics’ when we all know that the researches in the science of economics were born and brought up to perfection during the last four centuries at the hands of the early pioneers of economics such as Adam Smith and those traders and naturalists who preceded him?”

Those who deny the existence of Islamic economics say all of this, assuming that we claim that Islam conducts scientific researches in economics.

Having come to know the difference between the science of economics and the economic doctrine, and that the Islamic economic system is a doctrine, not a science, there remains no need for the above stated denial to exist because the existence of the economic doctrine in Islam does not mean that Islam discusses for people the laws of availability and demand. Rather, it simply means that Islam has called for a distinct regulation of the economic life, defining the bases and pillars upon which such life has to stand.

The belief in the existence of Islamic economics in this light seems plausible rather than odd.

We will not start in this series (of “The Islamic School”) the study of the details of Islamic economics. When we study such details in the forthcoming series, Insha-Allah, we will provide you with the concrete proofs, from the Holy Qur’an and the Sunnah, for the existence of the doctrine in Islam. There is no proof for the existence of a thing better than bringing it before the senses, and this we intend to do in the forthcoming series, Insha-Allah.

Now, before we provide the proofs for the existence of the Islamic economic doctrine, and be acquainted with the places in the Holy Qur’an and Sunnah where it can be derived, we want to provide the proof for its existence from the nature of the Islamic Shari’a [legislative system] and our prior comprehension thereof.