Principles of Islamic Economic Reform

That Islam’s is a ‘complete’ system is axiomatic, at least for Muslims, in view of the categorical Quranic declaration; ‘This day have I perfected your religion for you and completed My favour unto you …’ (5:3). An unambiguous perception of the Unity of all life processes — social, economic and religious — is Islam’s original contribution to civilisation, and offers the best hope to Muslims for reordering their socio-economic affairs according to the tenets of Islam. All this is clear enough. However, the full implications of the unitary Islamic philosophy are not always fully understood. Specific recommendations are made by many Muslim economists to ‘Islamise’ the existing economic systems by foisting into them elements of the Islamic economic system without any idea of the ‘priority’ of those elements for attaining the avowed policy objectives. A syncretism of this kind is both illogical and counter-productive because it ignores the inherent incompatibilities between the Islamic and other economic systems. Such a transplantation may produce a ‘mixed economy’, but not necessarily an Islamised economy. Indeed, the mixture may be positively un-Islamic if it aggravates the worst characteristic of the existing economic systems — viz. economic exploitation of the poor by the rich. In that case, such efforts get no support from the Holy Quran, which prohibits such dressing up: ‘Confound not truth with falsehood …’ (2:42).