For all those interested in Islamic Economics there’s an interesting academic development that is very significant - including for those many (Muslims) who’re absolutely cynical and doubtful not only about Islamic Economics, but all things Islamic and are ‘more
at home with all things Western’, from its toiletries to ideologies.
Whenever I try to talk to people especially those Muslims
who work(ed) in banks about the prohibition of interests and evils of interest
based banking systems and also those are more inclined towards interest-free economy
and had been caught up in this web due to unfortunate series of events,
inquire: Why do not ulema
(traditional, religious scholars) come up with an alternative plan? Firstly, it
is appreciable, they are not sarcastic & cynical, and want a genuine interest free system; I sincerely
pray to Allah to forgive their previous sins and open
their heart’s eye and ‘inspire them with the Vision of Islam’. Secondly, their
rhetorical objection shrouded in the question starting from the phrase, why don’t they/you… has seen light of
the day putting a stop mark to their repetitive objections, as if they were free
of all blames – none of us is free from blame except those strive in the way of
Allah for no worldly gains.
I was listening to this lecture on broad, immutable
principles of Islamic Economics by Dr Israr Ahmed (May Allah forgive his sins
and increase his rank).
In the end, an economist spoke very briefly before asking his question (which
i‘ll mention in the end). Sort of a glad tiding for me actually: He said that
recently [few years back] some Muslim economists who had
gone to western universities to do their PhDs in Islamic economics had their
theses approved. Their theses had been about the comparison between interest
based economic systems versus Islamic interest-free system. Purely based on
‘economic reasoning’ their theses have proved the ‘superiority of interest free
system of islam over Western interest based system’. Their supervisors were
Christian economists and they’ve accepted the superiority of Islamic system at
theoretical level. Many other Western economists have also started to accept
same proposition, he added. However, the supervisors and economists say that they do not want to implement Islamic system because for them interest system is quite simple
as compared to (apparently) ‘complicated profit sharing’ system of Islam. The
scholar, who to my mind is perhaps Dr Asad Zaman [check out his personal website which features his articles and papers], lamented that we as Pakistanis have wasted decades of freedom in which we could’ve implemented the
theoretical model of Islamic economics and could've easily shown the world that it’s not complicated and can be implemented in West too.
I’m in search of at least the abstract of the PhD theses. I
will try contacting Dr Asad about it, if he ever replies =)
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