OBSTACLES TO ISLAMIC ECONOMICS RESEARCH
Seventh International Conference on Islamic Economics,
Islamic
(Mohammad Nejatullah
Siddiqi mnsiddiqi@hotmail.com)
This paper emphasizes six
factors as main obstacles to progress in research in Islamic Economics. They
are: Lack of proper historical studies; Lack of relevant empirical studies;
Lack of adequate institutional support; Non-observance of ethical norms
relating to research and publications; Poor vision of Islamic society and
economy that fails to distinguish between the essential and the peripheral,
and, last but not the least; Failure to distinguish between the divine and the
human in the Islamic heritage. In what follows we discuss each one of these,
with the existing Islamic economics literature in mind. We then suggest
possible ways of removing these obstacles to further progress in Islamic
economics research. wa billah al-tawfiq
Before we launch our enquiry
it is appropriate to ask ourselves the question: Why are we doing it? All is
not well with Islamic economic research. The enthusiasm of the early decades
has gone. The surge in enrolment in Islamic economics courses, especially at the
post- graduate level, observed during the eighties of the last century, has all
but subsided. In its place we have kids looking for appropriate qualifications
in “Islamic Finance”, and sprouting of institutions offering such courses “on
line,” to meet the growing needs of the ‘industry’. Nothing bad. No regrets.
The question is, what about the grand idea of providing an alternative to
capitalism and socialism, that is informed by moral purpose and inspired by a
spiritual vision. Has it yielded to a desire to join the flock at its own
terms? I suspect it is so, and that this is rooted, among other things, in the
change of times. In the sixties and seventies of twentieth century the world of
Islam was abuzz with all things Islamic: education, society and state.
Currently, in the first decade if the twenty-first century, there is a collapse
of grand agendas leaving a pathetic scenario in which everything is in a flux:
education, society, state. As I proceed to discus the micro-causes of decline
in Islamic economic research, I beseech you not to lose sight of the macro-
framework in which the future would unfold it self. The grand Islamic agenda
launched in the early decades of twentieth century has been pushed back due to
its own shortcomings.
Islamic economics, insofar as its
normative aspect is concerned, is based on divine guidance revealed in the
seventh century Arabia to a desert people who later carried it to the fertile
valleys in the north, west and east, and then across the mountains and beyond
the oceans. People of all hues and colors, speaking different languages, and
cherishing different traditions rooted in each people’s unique past, tried to
live that guidance. Trying to do the same in the twenty-first century in a
globalising world, we need to know everything about these trials before we can
draw a plan of action.
That is where we failed. The source of most
of the economics projected as Islamic has been fiqh, which is largely
based on the historical experiences of the first four centuries, mostly in what
we now call the Middle East and
Let us have it straight, history,
even of Muslim peoples, is not a source of guidance for us. Divine guidance
inheres only in Quran and Sunnanh of the Prophet, peace be upon him. We invoke
history for the purpose Quran has recommended it to us: as ibar .[2]
There are lessons to be learnt,
warnings to be heeded. We run a great risk in ignoring history. Knowledge of
history may save us from repeating mistakes and encourage us onto following
into footsteps of those who succeeded.
A
greater risk inheres in focusing on only part of Islamic history and ignoring
the rest. This elevates a particular history to a status it cannot claim and
does not deserve. By committing this mistake we run the risk of alienating
parts of humanity for no fault of theirs.’
Being Realistic: Feel of
the Ground under your Feet
We know very little about contemporary
Muslim economic behavior. There is lot of work on what Muslims should be
doing as consumers, producers, employers, traders and managers. But what they
actually do, and whether it is any different from what others are doing in
similar situations, we hardly ever investigated. The same applies to our
distinctive institutions like awqaf, zakat funds, even Islamic
financial institutions. The question: What to do if and when a Muslim behaves
differently from the way he or she should behave cannot be addressed without
knowing what actual Muslim behavior is. Similarly we need to know whether our
institutions are actually playing the role claimed for them in Islamic economic
literature. Lack of adequate attention to finding out the actual state of
Muslim individuals and institutions, needs some explanation. It will be too
much to assume that we do not care, that all we care about is announcing what the
desired model is. This cannot be true as the whole thing about Islamic
economics is an offshoot of the movement towards Islamic living that the second
and third decades of the last century witnessed. In other words Islamic
Economics is not an academic exercise (no economics ever was). It is an
offshoot of the Islamic Movement. So it must be caring about change, change
from the current behavior and institutional structures to those in accordance with Islamic norms. But
can we do so without first knowing what the state of Muslim individual and of
Muslim institutions is, and why?
We claim a Muslim would behave ethically.
That there are higher spiritual horizons he or she is looking at in the conduct
of business. But how far they do so, and what explains the discrepancy? Does
the fault always lie with human perfidy? Or, someone may have overshot in
defining the norms and developing the concepts. There is also the problem that
inheres is comparing today’s Muslims with the idealized image of Muslims during
the days of the Prophet and the caliphs. The present we know and observe, but
the past is partly a mental construct. The reports that form the basis for that
construction are neither exhaustive nor all authentic. But their romantic spell
is capable of clouding judgment and suppressing rational evaluation.
I suspect that is what happened,
especially with regard to the period immediately following the Prophet. It
might have been found to be prudent to underplay departures from Islamic norms
as perceived. But that dilutes the didactic value of history as honest
recording of facts.
A final verdict must await fresh research.
Meanwhile it will do no harm to know the current state of affairs thoroughly.
That needs being done with regards to individual behavior in all aspects
relevant to economics. It needs being done for all regions and ethnic groups in
matters where geography may matter. For comparison we need studies of
non-Muslim behavior too, as we want to know impact of Islam, if any. The same
has to be done about institutions like family, bazaar, and inter-Islamic trade
as well as uniquely Muslim institutions like inheritance, the Hajj ,waqf
and zakat .
If there is one lesson to be learnt from
the collapse of the socialist agenda and demise of Soviet Russia during the
short span of less than a century, it is that one must feel the ground
underneath one’s feet before launching on a grand march to the ideal. Before
one dreams of successes to come, there may be lessons to learn from past and
current failures. This is especially true of priorities. What is to be done
incase the peoples’ own concerns are widely different from priorities in the agenda of the reformers?
Shall the reformers readjust to ground realities or persist with their own
sequencing?
Consider the current focus of Islamic
economists on Islamic finance and dearth of Islamic economic literature on
poverty removal, inequality and development. Among the billion plus Muslims of
the world, how many are bothered about banking and finance? How many of the
over six billion inhabiting the planet care about Islamic finance, considering
the fact that Islamic economics is for all?
Resources, to the extent available, need to be spent judiciously. It is not advisable to house all research under one roof or in one country, even in one region. It must also be multi lingual. Universities, autonomous institutes and associations like the International Association for Islamic Economics should all partake in this enterprise. A role awaits the publishing industry too, by way of patronizing young scholars and providing them with initial impetus. No less important is need for the media, including the mimbar, to orchestrate the new priorities so they are accepted by the ummah as a whole
Plagiarism is an endemic disease afflicting scholarship. But does it pose a threat to proper development of Islamic economic scholarship? Frankly speaking, I don’t know. There are indicators, however that it is assuming bothersome proportions. There have been complaints on ibf net, the popular Islamic economic discussion forum in English. Some senior teachers and authors have also told me the same about research and publications in the Arabic language.
It
will take time and efforts to root out the evil. Teachers and publishers have
special responsibility, but peer review and vigilance must also play its role
more effectively. But will they? We have some notions about knowledge being for
the benefit of all, any proprietary claims to new ideas being essentially bad,
un-Islamic. Besides being baseless in law and morality, such notions totally
ignore the way new facts are discovered, fresh ideas originate, and new
knowledge germinates and flourishes in a society. Original research in modern
times demands life-long dedication. Each small brick laid could be the basis on
which further edifice may rest. Unless it is secured in the name of the
originator, and brings him or her any recognition and/or rewards society thinks
fit for awarding, there would be no incentive for follow up work. It is in
society’s interest to protect the rights of researchers, authors and publishers
from plagiarism and piracy so that the flow of scientific research continues
unabated. This social protection does not depend on law alone. More than legal
provisions, it needs, first of all, to be clearly recognized as the norm. No one, neither a student nor an author has a
right to lift even a sentence or two from any author’s work and present it as
his or her own, without reference to the source and proper acknowledgement.
Cheating in scholarship is worse than
robbing someone of material possessions. Plagiarism, unlike robbery, harms
society much more than it hurts the victim. Taking it lightly is like allowing
quakes to wear the mantle of physicians. The intellectual health of a society
that fails to prevent it will be at grave risk.
Islam is for all times and all places, and
so are its teachings that are relevant for the economic life of man. It was,
however, revealed in seventh century
The
record of Islamic economic research so far has not been very promising. Islamic
economists hardly did any better than those without any learning of social
dynamics, specializing only in traditional Islamic sciences developed more than
a thousand years ago. Hopes of getting better results by bringing the two
expertise together by housing them in the same institution and/or seating them
around the same conference table have not been very encouraging.[3]
The result is a kind of intellectual paralysis. What is worse is the
exploitation of this situation by a section of the market to offer conventional
goods in superficial Islamic wrappings in the name of Islam.
It will take going into very many details
fully to substantiate the above. I do not think it is necessary, even proper,
to attempt doing that in this paper. I wish the task of substantiating (or
refuting!) the point made above is taken up by someone with more time and
energy than available to this writer. But I cannot miss this opportunity of
giving at least one example, that of insurance. The Islamic economic literature
on insurance during the last half- century, and the corresponding practice in
the name of Takaful and Islamic insurance, exemplifies the problem, the
predicament and the dangers I have indicated in the previous paragraph.[4]
In a world in which even such problems
created by rapid technological change as job insecurity and increasing
inequality in the distribution of income, are sought to be tackled by insurance[5],
we are still discussing whether the idea of insurance itself is valid. Scholars
would generally regard as alien, and therefore unacceptable, the idea of random
events being subject to regularities that could be discovered, given a
mathematical formulation and used for insuring against risk. Yet the same
scholars would easily accept the fiction of tabarru’(donation) to
validate thinly wrapped conventional insurance.[6]
I do not want to debunk the various Islamic
insurance products available in the market. Let a hundred flowers bloom. What I
am lamenting is a failure to accept anything that does not fit in the old mould
despite its obvious wisdom. In trying to abide by derived rules we have
distanced ourselves from the very source of rules. We have already noted the
anomaly of Islamic economic research relegating poverty removal to the
backburner and bringing investing rich peoples’ surpluses for making them
richer to the fore. That is how the essence is overwhelmed by the peripheral.
The remedy lies in focusing on the vision
of a Muslim and that of an Islamic society before we attend to rules of conduct
and ways and means for their implementation. The so-called economic rules of
individual conduct and social policy, most of them lifted from secondary
sources, blur our vision of the total picture because we are living in a
different time and place. The better method is to
perceive and conceptualize the totality from out of
the primary sources, the Quran and the Sunnah. All the rest should follow and
not lead, insofar as Islamic economic research is concerned.
The Human Element in the
Islamic Heritage
This brings me to the last
point: The need to distinguish what is human from what is divine in our Islamic
heritage. The Prophet, peace be upon him, brought the word of God and explained
it by living it and guiding a whole generation of men and women organize their
lives, including their economic affairs, in accordance with divine guidance.
The word of God is preserved in its originality, un-adulterated by word of man.
But the same is not true of anything else. As the Prophet leaves the scene and
his companions are left to fend for themselves, the problem gets more
complicated. It is no longer a matter merely of authenticity of reports. We are
now dealing with men like us, without any direct link with divinity. Facing new
challenges, they no longer had the Prophet to ask how to meet them. All they
had is the Quran and what they had heard from the Prophet or, seen him doing in
different situations. Building on that, they had to decide for themselves, and
they did. Times moved on. The second and third centuries of Islam brought new
challenges and explored new solutions. It is during these times that most of
the recorded Islamic heritage took shape. Besides the vast literature on what
is characterized as Islamic sciences the age produced a rich harvest of living
traditions, arts and culture. Supplemented by the intellectual contributions in
the following centuries, that is the heritage we cherish and seek inspiration
from in our own enterprise of living an Islamic life in this globalized world
of the twenty-first century. So far so good.
In exercising ones own judgment in the
enterprise of Islamic living, it is good to have so much to fall back on. It is
a great help. But one should not be constrained by the sayings and doings of
other humans. The divine is binding but the human is not. Additional
constraints thwart fresh thinking and innovation. Sacralization of the
non-sacred has been a great source of degeneration in human history. It is one
thing to treat history as help and inspiration. It is very different when we
try to recreate it in a changed world, and that too in economic affairs.
History, even Islamic history, is not sacred. We run a great risk by giving it
that status.
Well said, but has it any relevance to the
subject in hand? I think it has. You need only a cursory glance at the Islamic
economic literature on taxation, fiscal policy, social welfare and development
financing to conclude that the writer is focused on some script, rarely looking
up to gauge the reality faced in modern living. Most writers on Islamic Public
Finance[7]
are writing history, telling us how to recreate it. The divine in our heritage
does not offer such script, so, how come? That is the problem.
The problem is not confined to archaic
treatment of novel modern situations and issues. Our fixation with a particular
history not only alienates us from current reality, it also isolates us from
the rest of humanity. It reinforces Muslims’ sense of being different from
others to undue proportions, making frank, sincere outreaching and interaction
almost impossible. The normal process of learning from others’ experiences and
contributions is replaced by, at the least, indifference and apathy, and often
by suspicion and hostility. No wonder we get the same in response.
This situation has to be rectified before
it goes out of hand. There is no better area for making a beginning than
economics. I say this because the need to focus on the divine in human heritage
and treat the human only as efforts in implementation from which lessons can be
drawn is most obvious in economic matters. It is the economic affairs of man
that bear the brunt of technological change and are often harbingers of change in
other aspects of life. It is in economics more than in other areas that our
focus should be on Maqasid al-Shriah [8](the
objectives of Islamic Law) rather than what is commonly perceived as Law.
Islamic economic research, unbound from the chains that human elements in
Islamic heritage have put around it, can then bring Muslim intellectuals out of
their shell into the company of other intellectuals for exploring ways and
means of delivering humanity from the unprecedented predicament it finds itself
in.
Regaining Self Confidence
A
shrinking from independent thinking and total reliance on Islamic heritage came
to Muslims after the first five hundred years of their history gradually and
due to many factors. First it was to save Islamic law from becoming a hand-maid
of petty rulers in a world of Islam torn asunder by sectarian squabbles and
internecine wars. Then came the colonial era and the onslaught of Christian
missionaries in the wake of western armies. The new emperors produced their own
courtiers from out of greedy elite among the natives. Islamic thought was
defended from inroads by foreigners and tampering by motivated insiders by
declaring it self sufficient and immune to change. All that is history. Things
have been changing after the coming of Muslim peoples from out of the yoke of
colonialism during the last century. The intellectual scene of the ummah
is humming with activity, the emergence of Islamic economics being one of its
fruits. But it takes time. There is no justification for despondency.
Nevertheless speed matters in this age of rapid change. The obstacles to
progress in Islamic economic research are all removable. We can do that. Better
begin by diverting existing resources to priority areas of research. The next
step should be to revamp the existing institutions involved in Islamic economic
research by giving them greater autonomy, making them more democratic and
providing them with more resources. Let the newly rich among Muslims in
The toughest nut to crack are the two last
mentioned obstacles, failure to prioritize so that the essence prevails over
the form and detaching the human accretions from the eternal and universal
divine guidance. Two sides of the same coin, they are so well entrenched in
traditional Islamic scholarship that even their mention is bound to raise
eyebrows. Yet there would be no breakthrough without removing these obstacles.
They are borne of precautionary
defensive mechanisms created during the last one thousand years to protect
Islam from corruption by the un-scrupulous Muslim autocrats, foreigners and
their lackeys. Even after two hundred years of Islamic revivalist movements,
many calls to ijtihad and fresh thinking, and hundreds of conferences
and seminars to revive creativity among Muslim intellectuals, fear of the
unknown makes the commonality of Muslims and their mentors stay close to the
beaten path, if not quite on it. We may err if we think independently. There is
bound to be variety of opinion if free discussion and independent judgment is
encouraged. Far-flung regions of the Islamic realm, now bound together by
adherence to half a dozen major schools of fiqh, may opt for newer
directions, especially in matters of economic policy. And so on and so forth,
goes the long list of reasons advising prudence, conservatism, at the least
wait and see. The net result is restraining the pious, the knowledgeable and
those likely to evoke trust from the Muslim masses, from ijtihad ,
leaving the field entirely, or mostly, to dare devil mujtahids. The
outcome, not entirely unexpected, becomes yet other reason why the status quo
should not be disturbed!
The status quo cannot sustain itself. If
we do not change in a well-considered manner, change will be forced onto us
in haphazard manner. I already see it
happening in an area so dear to us Islamic economists[9],
the area of Islamic finance. The remedy lies in getting rid of the fear
psychosis, the fear of committing mistakes in matters of religion, thereby
inviting the wrath of Allah. That is too dumb a view of God to be taken
seriously. Did the Prophet not tell us there is a reward awaiting even the mujtahid
who errs?[10] We have
faith in God that needs to be buttressed by confidence in ourselves. The
chances of making a mistake today are less, not more, than the chances of a
Muslim thinker making a mistake in the third century of Islam. We have better
access to Quran and Sunnah, more works on other Islamic sciences within easy
reach, and better, faster means of mutual consultation and discussion than was
available to our fore runners.
[1]…….al-Faharis al-Tahliliyah lil-Iqtisad al-Islami (1985-86) 5 vols. Amman, Jordan ,Maktabah Saleh Kamil & al- Majma’al-Malaki li-Buhus al-Hadarah al-Islamiyah, Mussasaah Aal-al-Bayt
[2].Certainly in the stories of the bygone people there is a lesson for people of understanding…..[12:111.] Also see , 59:2; 3:12
[3].Mohammad Nejatullah Siddiqi, ‘Shariah, Economics and the progress of Islamic Finance: The Role of Shariah Experts ”, Seventh Harvard Forum on Islamic Finance,21 April 2006.. Available at the author’s website<www.siddiqi.com/mns>
[4] Issa
Abdoh (1978) al-Tamin bain al-Hill wa-l Tahrim ,
[5]
.Robert J . Shiller (2003) The New financial Order, Risk in the 21st
Century,
[6] One
scholar is reported to have defined it as “ ..a contract of donation with a
condition of compensation..”. See the site
http://www.kantakji.org/fiqh/files/insurance/diffbwconvIns.pdf
( accessed 21 March 2007) More on reciprocal
tabarru’ http://www.Islamic-world.net/economics/takaful_intro.htm Many other details are available at
websites of Bank Negara
[7] S. A. Siddiqi (1948,1975) Public Finance in Islam, Lahore, Sheikh Mohammad Ashraf ; Ibrahim Yusuf Ibrahim (1980) al-Nafaqat al-Ámmah fi’l Islam, Cairo, Matabi’ Diyab; …( 1989-90) al-Idarah al-Maliyah fi’l Islam,3 vol;s. Amman, Muassisat Aal al-Bayt
[8] Mohammad Nejatullah Siddiqi (2004) Key Note Address to Round Table on Islamic Economics, Jeddah IRTI, May 26-27,2004. Available on the author’s website <www.siddiqi.com/mns>
[9] Mohammad Nejatullah Siddiqi (2006)Islamic banking and Finance in Theory and Practice: A Survey of State of the Art, in Islamic Economic Studies(Jeddah) , Vol. 13,No. 2,pp. 1-48,Also by the same author (2007) Economics of Tawarruq : How its Mafasid overwhelm the Masalih, Harvard Law School and London School of Economics, Workshop on Tawarruq, Available at the author’s website <www.siddiqi.com/mns>
[10] Abu Dawood in his Sunnan has the following report: …Amr Ibn al-Ás reports that the Prophet, peace be upon him, said, “When a ruler decides and exercises his judgment and gets it right, he is rewarded twice. When he exercises his judgment to decide and errs, he is rewarded once.” Hadeeth # 3574 . Kitab al –Aqdiyah , Bab # 2