Islamic Economics: An Alternative Perspective

The debate of Islamic economics, banking and finance has come a long way since last 20 years and the theory is now somehow put into practice. The International Institute of Islamic Economics-IIUI was among the pioneering attempts to teach and disseminate the cause of Islamic economics in an academic setting. However, things have substantially changed over the last several years and we can see many "Islamic" banks operating all over the world with Shariah compliant products under the supervision of a whole bunch of Shariah Advisers. A Karachi based "family of scholars" have really made their fortune out of this boom and they are now "green" cardholders when it comes to Islamic Banking. Quite understandably there is a dissent too and we are sharing here a critical voice of a young scholar who is raising some very crucial concerns about what is happening in the name of Islamic economics. The reason why we are sharing it here is pretty straightforward: the nexus between IIUI-IIIE and contemporary Islamic banking & finance.

This is a series of articles which Muhammad Zahid Siddique Mughal (National University-FAST, Karachi) is currently writing in monthly Al-Shariah. Because of space constraints, we are only giving links to both parts of the article:

Part 1: http://www.alsharia.org/articles/monthly_alsharia/2008/Aug08/islami_maeeshat.html

Part 2: http://www.alsharia.org/articles/monthly_alsharia/2008/Sep08/islamiMuashiat_zahidSiddique.html