Economic Justice in Islam

The book is an attempt at bringing out the distinguished features of the economic system of Islam, concerned with the concrete problems of economic life and their solution according to the injuctions of the Shari’ah, Attention is focused on the system of land tenure and the development of the minor resources, stressing the basic principle of Islam that the gifts of Nature be always free without any man or human agency, such as the state, charging any rent for the same. The prohibition of riba is beyond all question, but it is not the panacea for all the economic ills.

Recalling the history of the development of banking institutions from the Abbasi’d times; the main function of the banks as a middleman between the investor and the industrialist and some aspects of the working of the corporations are shown to be incompatible with the Islamic nations of equity and justice. The sprit of western nationalism is a negation of Islamic universalism, which makes no distinction between a Muslim and a non-Muslim in the field of economics.

According to the author, only an appeal to reason in relation to the concrete situations of life can put Islam on the offensive as the champion of justice and equity (of course, not equality) in the economic relationship of man to man. In this way, the rise of Communism and Socialism is Islam’s opportunity. The fashionable defence of Islam with the only armour of “ideology” (in itself an outlandish, disreputable terms) is already crumbing, having only served to discredit Islam as a prop of an intolerably unjust order.