A Qur'anic Model for a Universal Economic Theory

36 Mohammad E. Biraima
world as his guiding principle of choice, and the corruption of the earth that resulted
from this choice.
There are at least three reasons for the failure of the majority of mankind to be
thankful to God for His bounties; firstly, the possibility of being unaware of these
bounties, or secondly, if aware, do not know the meaning of thankfulness, or, lastly, if
aware and know the meaning of thankfulness, it indicates the triumph of whims over
reason. The above sample of verses points clearly to the last reason as the main cause
for man's ingratitude.
The MPC and the Philosophy of Islamic Economics
The previous sections of this paper show beyond doubt the central place
economics basin the plans of God for man on earth. This fact makes the study of the
economic domain of man's life from an Islamic perspective a fundamental task for
economists and warrants a unique role for an Islamic economic science. In this section
we deal briefly with the ontological and epistemological implications of this paper for
Islamic economics.
The analysis of this paper so far shows that the subject matter of man's life
involves a test by the Creator in which the interaction between the economic bounties of
God and the dual nature of the human self is crucial. When the economic process of
production, distribution, and consumption is approached from the perspective of the
righteous self, the outcome is thankfulness. This process is manifested in the
maximization of an iman function, the arguments of which are good economic deeds.
The entire process is characterized by the spending of wealth in the way of God. On the
other hand, the same economic process if approached from the perspective of the
wrong-prone (whimsical) self, the outcome is ingratitude. This is manifested in the
maximization of a pleasure (utility) function, the arguments of which are seemingly
pleasurable economic deeds. The most outstanding feature of this latter process is either
the wasteful spending of wealth or its withholding from being spent.
The Holy Qur'an is emphatically clear about man's life as a process of
maximization of one of the above two functions (iman or pleasure). The Holy Qur'an
also gives detailed account of those psychological attributes of the human self that
correspond to and are responsible for the existence and maximization of either of the
two functions. Thus a fundamental part of the subject matter of Islamic psychology
would be the study of these dual attributes of the human self and the conditions under
which one type of attributes predominates, and the distinct effects of in dulgence in
economic pleasures, or the lack of it, on each type of these attributes.
Building on the findings of Islamic psychology, the subject matter of Islamic
economics should be to study the economic implications of the maximization by man of
either of the iman and 'pleasure' functions on production, distribution, and consumption,
and the implied economic system pertaining to each process. Both functions are
Qur'anic, but the iman function is normative because it deals with what man ought-to-do
in the MPC as the verses in section (b - 1) of stage (5) show. The pleasure function, on
the other hand, is descriptive in the sense that it deals with what man generally does in
disobedience to God.