Conclusion to Islamic Economics and Human Well-being

We can trace the history of Islamic economic thought from the 7th century - the era of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and his first four caliphs. The first Islamic state had an agricultural and commercial economy where most of the economic relationships followed pre-modern traditional methods of production, distribution, and consumption. Some Islamic economists have tried to relate the present movement of Islamic economics and finance to that period. Despite all the romance that such an approach has, the fact is that Muslim societies during the last fifteen centuries wherever they existed followed the methods and practices of agriculture, trade, industry and finance as other people did in the world. There is no study yet which documents precisely the economic systems and methods of Islamic societies during the past fifteen centuries. We only have a romantic belief that they followed some sort of Islamic economic system. However, more concrete evidence has yet to emerge.