Islamic Economics: Where From, Where To?

Abstract

The paper “Islamic Economics: Where From, Where To?” of Muhammad Nejatullah Siddiqi, a great scholar and pioneer of Islamic economics and finance, has addressed many important issues in Islamic finance and economics. These include: the role of Sharīʿah and fiqh, the assimilation of Islamic finance with conventional finance, the increasing role of debt in Islamic finance, the necessity to reduce the role of debt, the failure of Islamic finance to alleviate wealth and income inequality, the concept of isrāf, micro-finance, zakāh, awqāf, the concept of money as debt, cancellation of debt through consoles, inflation, and write-offs, inflation and exchange rate devaluation, the foreign debt burden, and prospects for commodity money and a world single currency. Siddiqi notes that conventional finance shortcomings, especially debt and debt trading, had crept into Islamic finance, rendering the latter vaguely different from the former.