Scarcity or abundance: why having so much means too little - Islamic economics and the search for its methodology

This chapter aims to resolve one of the unresolved issues in Islamic economics: how should we define Islamic economics? It attributes the unresolved issue of scarcity in Islamic economics to the absence of a methodological discourse. Therefore, the chapter explores the relevance of scarcity and abundance in Islamic economics from the perspective of critical realism. In contrast to positivism, which relies on sensible observation, critical realism delves beyond the seen phenomena to include elements from the unseen reality. A major implication of this study is that the scarcity postulate of mainstream economics manifests a positivist ideology focused on the seen phenomena while undermining the unseen reality. However, if economics were viewed from a different methodological paradigm, the concept of scarcity would not be central to economics.