An Advanced Exposition of Islamic Economics and Finance

This book is a challenging inquiry using the foundational epistemology that establishes the Islamic worldview and its applications to all socio-scientific theory, issues and problems. This foundational premise of all socio-scientific inquiry is the epistemology of unity of knowledge in the Qur’an combined with the Guidance of the Prophet Muhammad (Sunnah) and extensive discourse in scientific reasoning. Such a foundational epistemology called Tawhid, the Oneness of Allah in the Qur’an, is challenging and quite a different worldview of socio-scientific inquiry than the existing thinking and practice that came to be known as ‘Islamic Economics and Finance’. The latter literature is embedded in mainstream economic theory and practice. It contributes to the understanding of the methodology emanating from the fundamental epistemology of Tawhid in socio-scientific reasoning. No particular demand is placed on such a development as an offshoot of mainstream economic, financial and more widely of socio-scientific thinking and practice. Thus, not only ‘Islamic Economics and Finance’ but also mainstream socio-scientific thinking await a new epistemology and worldview that can be quite distinct and more holistic for the benefit of mankind than the confined and narrow vision of both mainstream and ‘Islamic’ economics and finance in particular and socio-scientific thinking and practice in general. This book is a bold inquiry in the new and challenging direction of unity knowledge as the spring of new epistemological thinking and its application.