Challenges in Naming the Discipline: Are there any other Alternatives to "Islamic Economics"?

Abstract

Muslims have been facing many challenges in the last century where as main challenge also lays the economic system. Even though not defined precisely in terminology and naming Muslims have always cared for performing economic activities according to Islam. Yet this has been hard to be done after Muslims lost the governance attached to religion thus opening the way towards colonialism politically, economically, and culturally. As a result, Muslim societies throughout the world were imposed different economic systems that were in contradiction with the spirit of Islam. As a way out, Muslim societies were motivated to make movements towards establishing economic system that complies with Islam. Being challenge for establishment, a challenge within the challenge has been proper naming. Even though debated many times because of different reasons, circumstances, and timeframe, it has been brought as an issue up to our living days. In this paper, we have mainly focused on trying to provide solutions on the proper naming of the Islamic economy. At the same time, we have looked at the journey that this challenge has gone through. Firstly, we have looked at the usage and representativeness of several names such as economy, oiconomia, economics, political economy, and moral economy. Then we have continued debating the use of the name iqtisad over the name economy. Additionally, we have advocated usage of the prefix Islamic. We have briefly analyzed reasons for decline in Muslim society. In narrative way we have looked at contributors in the field of Islamic economics. We have conducted qualitative research, and mostly we have been focused on analysis of the theoretical framework.