The Oxymoronic Character of the Islamic Economics and the Omni-Absent Scholarship to Align Islam & Economic Growth

Abstract

Islamic Economics has been sceptically deemed as a rhetorical bias, either as an oxymoron or perhaps a redundant insistence. Going through the work of Monzar Kahf, I thought it to be a redundant construct, where in his thoughtful impersonation of the Khuldunian thought, he claims that economics is inherently Islamic and doesn’t necessitate the prefix - while the socialist or the capitalist versions being graded as partial or inadequate. On the contrary, the oxymoronic shade of Islamic Economist surfaced when, I reviewed authors like Kuran 2004, 2011 Ayubi 1995, Chapra 2008, referring the orthodox constructs of interest inhibition, lack of civic institution, limited continuity enterprise, authoritarianism, autocracy and hereditary succession as counter-economic or anti-growth in nature. This is in cohesion of Kuran 1997 view of Islamic Economics as a rush measure to Islamize a highly secular discipline, in response to an urge of distinct identity in the post-colonial world. This gets really interesting when we find that the sole idea of Islamic Economics lays its justification in challenge its surfaces against injustice, expropriation, exploitation, inequality and deprivation. Despite of being classified as human-centric development, it Islamic development literature has however, the broadening wedge between the ideals and present state of the Islamic world has attracted a lot of criticism from across the world.