of Economic Rules
The fountainhead of all Islamic paradigms is the Quran. It provides the framework within which all relevant envisioned conceptions of reality find their source. This eternal source specifies rules of behavior (institutions) applicable to all societies at all times. These rules are immutable temporally and spatially. The meta-framework specifies the immutable, abstract rules. The archetype model articulates the operational form of these rules and demonstrates how these rules are operationalized in a human community. The abstract became operational in the hands of the one human being who was the one and only direct recipient of the source of the meta-framework, the Quran. Through the words and actions of this perfect human, the meta-framework given by the Creator in the Quran was interpreted, articulated, and applied to the immediate human community of his time. The meta-framework specifies general universal laws, rules of behavior. The archetype model provides universal-specific rules of behavior and the institutional structure needed for organizing a human society based on the immutable rules of the meta-framework.
No one understood the Quran better than the Messenger (sawa), appointed to deliver it to humankind. During his blessed life on this plane of existence, he was both the spiritual and temporal authority for his followers. In his capacity as the spiritual authority, he expounded, interpreted, and explained the content of the Quran. In his capacity as the temporal authority, he operationalized the rules (institutions) specified in the Quran in the town of Medina. The economic system, which he established in Medina, is the archetype of Islamic economic systems. This archetype contains a core institutional structure that is immutable because it is firmly established based on the Messenger's (sawa) authoritative operationalization of the rules prescribed by the Creator in the Quran.
A typical example is the institution of inheritance. The specific procedure on how the inheritance is to be distributed is described in the Quran. There are also institutions that the Messenger (sawa) established which, while not explicitly stated in the Quran, are based on his understanding of the Quran as its highest interpretive authority. An example of this type of institution is the rules of market behavior. These two types of rules are immutable: Any conception of how an Islamic economy works will have to take these two elements of the archetype model as given. A third type of institutions at the periphery of the archetype model are temporally and spatially specific to the time and the place in which the archetype model was implemented. For example, the Messenger (sawa) instituted rules of noninterference with market forces and the need for unhindered flow of information in the market. This rule is of and itself an immutable rule of the archetype model, but forces that would interfere with market functioning may vary and are time and place dependent. For instance, before Islam, one acceptable method of interfering with market forces in Arabia was that middlemen would meet caravans bringing supplies some distance outside of the cities and purchase the supplies for resale in the cities. The Messenger (sawa) prohibited this procedure. Clearly, the principle of noninterference with the market forces is unchanged, but this particular procedure is no longer relevant. The economic hermeneutics of this rule and its application to a particular time, place, and market is part and parcel of what an Islamic economic paradigm would seek to address.
The meta-framework envisions an ideal society as one composed of believers committed to rule compliance. The individual members are aware of their “oneness” and conscious of the fact that their own self-interest is served by seeing “others as themselves.” Such a society is one of the “Golden Mean” that avoids extremes and is so rule compliant that it serves as a benchmark for and a witness to humanity (Quran 2:143). This is a society that actively encourages cooperation in socially beneficial activities and prohibits cooperation in harmful ones (Quran 3:104, 110, 114; 9:71). Moreover, in this society, consultation, both at the level of individual as well as the collectivity, is institutionalized in accordance with the rule prescribed by Allah (swt) (Quran 3:159; 42:38; 2:233). Similarly, all other rules of behavior prescribed in the Quran are institutionalized with sufficiently strong incentive structure to enforce rule compliance. The objective is the establishment of social justice in society.
Implications of the Agent-Trustee Relationship
Faculties such as áql (intelligence of the heart), human dignity, walayahh and fitrah (the primordial nature of humankind), gifted to humankind by their Creator, were to be employed in cognition, remembrance, and fidelity to the primordial covenant (mithaq). The crucial importance of fidelity to this covenant drives the necessity of remaining faithful to all covenants, contracts, and promises, as long as they are permissible, which often is emphasized in the Quran (e.g., 5:1). The commitment to remain faithful to the terms and conditions of the primordial covenant (to bear witness to Divine Existence and His Unity), equipped with the gifts of their Creator (the resources of the earth), humans were then assigned the role of trustee-agent (khalifah, or viceroy) of the Divine on earth (Quran 2:30). This mission consisted of, inter alia, developing the earth (Quran 11:61); establishing social justice through the exercise of love toward their kind and the rest of creation, as a reflection of the love of the Creator; and removing the obstacles from the path of others of their kind toward Allah (swt) (i.e., their passage from the darkness of personality traits unworthy of the human state toward the light of nearness to their Creator). Once again, it is the compliance with the rules of behavior prescribed by the Creator that makes treading the path feasible.
This agent-trustee position is a divine trust that is bestowed on humans. It is by virtue of this trust and the responsibilities associated with it that humans have been invested with domination over what has been created for them. Many verses in the Quran affirm this subjugation of resources to humans. The entire human population has the collective responsibility to ensure that every human being has the opportunity to tap his or her dormant potentialities and possibilities and convert them to actualities. This collective view of humans evokes the matter of unity of humankind, which in turn reflects the recognition of Allah's (swt) Oneness and Unity, that is, Tawheed. The link between responsible living in this world and accountability in the next provides a means for an infinite planning horizon for human beings.
The agent-trustee office bestowed on humans requires the activation of the nonmaterial gifts from the Creator that empower humans to perform their responsibility of agent-trustee. To this end, a self-cleansing and purification process is required. Believing in Islam is not a sterile, static, superficial, and passive verbal-physical expression and pretension to Islamicity. A process instituted by the Creator serves to energize the ascending movement and progress of the self toward its perfection.
Significance of Rule Compliance
A verse in the Quran contains the necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of an ideal society and economy: “If the members of the collectivity were to be rule-compliant and ever-conscious surely We should have opened for them blessings from the sky and from the earth. But they rejected [the Divine messages] therefore we seized them on account of their [noncompliant] deeds” (Quran 7:96). The necessary condition for an ideal economy is being rule compliant. The sufficient condition of taqwa (i.e., the inner torch of consciousness of the ever-presence of the Creator) requires that there be no occasional lapse in rule compliance whatsoever. That is the ideal society and the economy is one in which humans, individually and collectively, are fully rule compliant. In such a society, the members and their collectivity comply with rules specified for all in the society and other rules relating to behavior in particular circumstances, such as those relating to economic behavior. The first include, inter alia, the rules of enjoining the good and forbidding evil behavior; of consultation, cooperation, and avoiding harm to others; and of establishing social justice. Of these, by far, the first is the most crucial. It is an imperative without which compliance with all other rules, general and specific, will be weak or avoided altogether without impunity. It is a foundational rule that empowers all other decreed rules of behavior compliance that allow humans to tread the absolutely desirable path of closeness to Allah (swt) commanding us and others to rule compliance that derives directly from cognizance and acknowledgment of the love bond (walayahh) between the Creator and humankind as well as its derivative love bond among humans.
When
