The making of Islamic economics : an epistemological inquiry into Islam's moral economic teachings, legal discourse, and Islamization process

Abstract

The dissertation investigates both genealogy and epistemology of the contemporary Islamic economics, analysing and comparing the two with classical Islamic economic thought and its moral philosophy. Contemporary Islamic economics is the result of a series of processes that were set in motion by the colonization of the Muslim nations in Africa, Middle East and South (east) Asia, followed by the creation of the modern nation state. Islamic economics emerged as a distinct field of study only in the second half of the 20th century, and it has been conceptualized also within the framework of the Islamization process in the 1970s. However, by studying classical economic philosophy in Islam, the premodern economic thought thought in Islamic tradition treated economic activities primarily as a moral endeavour and hence of as part of the overall metaphysical qualities of Shari'a.