Islamic economics

Islamic economics (Arabic: الاقتصاد الإسلامي‎) is a term used to refer to Islamic commercial jurisprudence (Arabic: فقه المعاملات‎, fiqh al-mu'āmalāt).Political Islam portalconstructed on the basis of isolated prescriptions, anecdotes, examples, words of the Prophet, all gathered together and systematized by commentators according to an inductive, casuistic method.''as the classical ulamas do ... the chapter on selling and buying (Kharid o forush) comes after the one on pilgrimage and present economic questions as individual acts open to moral analysis: `To lend is among the good works that are particularly recommended in the verses of the Quran and in the Traditions.`'to be meritorious as a separate field of inquiry, Islamic economics cannot confine itself just to explaining and deducing laws in economic matters based on core principles. Since this function is already performed by the discipline of Islamic jurisprudence ... In a political and regional context where Islamist and ulema claim to have an opinion about everything, it is striking how little they have to say about this most central of human activities, beyond repetitious pieties about how their model is neither capitalist nor socialist.'We create the same type of products that we do for the conventional markets. We then phone up a Sharia scholar for a Fatwa . If he doesn't give it to us, we phone up another scholar, offer him a sum of money for his services and ask him for a Fatwa. We do this until we get Sharia compliance. Then we are free to distribute the product as Islamic.' Islamic economics (Arabic: الاقتصاد الإسلامي‎) is a term used to refer to Islamic commercial jurisprudence (Arabic: فقه المعاملات‎, fiqh al-mu'āmalāt). Islamic commercial jurisprudence entails the rules of transacting finance or other economic activity in a Shari'a compliant manner, i.e., a manner conforming to Islamic scripture (Quran and sunnah).Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) has traditionally dealt with determining what is required, prohibited, encouraged, discouraged, or just permissible, according to the revealed word of God (Quran) and the religious practices established by Muhammad (sunnah). This applied to issues like property, money, employment, taxes, loans, along with everything else. The social science of economics, on the other hand, works to describe, analyse and understand production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services, and studied how to best achieve policy goals, such as full employment, price stability, economic equity and productivity growth. Early forms of mercantilism and capitalism are though to have been developed in the Islamic Golden Age from the 9th century and later became dominant in European Muslim territories like Al-Andalus and the Emirate of Sicily. The Islamic economic concepts taken and applied by the Gunpowder Empires and various Islamic kingdoms and sultanates led to systemic changes in their economy. Particularly in the Mughal India, its wealthiest region of Bengal, a major trading nation of the medieval world, signaled the period of proto-industrialization. In the mid-twentieth century, campaigns began promoting the idea of specifically Islamic patterns of economic thought and behavior. By the 1970s, 'Islamic economics' was introduced as an academic discipline in a number of institutions of higher learning throughout the Muslim world and in the West. The central features of an Islamic economy are often summarized as: (1) the 'behavioral norms and moral foundations' derived from the Quran and Sunnah; (2) collection of zakat and other Islamic taxes, (3) prohibition of interest (riba) charged on loans. Advocates of Islamic economics generally describe it as neither socialist nor capitalist, but as a 'third way', an ideal mean with none of the drawbacks of the other two systems.Among the claims made for an Islamic economic system by Islamic activists and revivalists are that the gap between the rich and the poor will be reduced and prosperity enhanced by such means as the discouraging of the hoarding of wealth,taxing wealth (through zakat) but not trade, exposing lenders to risk through Profit sharing and venture capital,discouraging of hoarding of food for speculation,and other activities that Islam regards as sinful such as unlawful confiscation of land. However, critics like Timur Kuran have described it as primarily a 'vehicle for asserting the primacy of Islam', with economic reform being a secondary motive. According to Hasan Raza, after more than six decades of its formal/ informal existence, a consensus definition of Islamic economics has not yet emerged. Some definitions that have been offered include: