Expanding the Frontiers of Economics: Some Insights from the Qur’anic Revelation

Abstract

The primary sources of economics are human thinking and observation through sense-perception. Economics does not accept any super-sensory source as a valid field of enquiry. However, divine revelation granted to Prophets by God, is a source of knowledge that deals with wide-ranging issues including the economic problem. The main argument of the paper is that by integrating human understanding of the divine revelation with conventional economics, existing frontiers of the subject can be expanded. Although the divine revelation is found in the basic texts of all revealed religions, yet the present paper deals with the Islamic primary sources (the Qur’an2 and the hadith3) only. The paper enumerates, by way of example, six problem areas where the Qur’anic revelation can give a lead. These areas are: inequality, human happiness and unhappiness, economic balance, philanthropy, financial crises and stock exchange instability, and waste in human society. However, such a conclusion would firstly require overcoming prejudice against religion and non-conventional fields of enquiry.