Islamic Economic Jurisprudence - History

History

Traditional Islamic concepts having to do with economics included:

  • zakat—the "taxing of certain goods, such as harvest, with an eye to allocating these taxes to expenditures that are also explicitly defined, such as aid to the needy."
  • gharar—"the interdiction of chance ... that is, of the presence of any element of uncertainty, in a contract (which excludes not only insurance but also the lending of money without participation in the risks)."
  • riba—"referred to as usury (modern Islamic economists reached consensus that Riba is any kind of interest, rather than usury)"

These concepts, like others in Islamic law, came from the "prescriptions, anecdotes, examples, and words of Muhammad, gathered and systematized by commentators according to an inductive, casuistic method." Sometimes other sources such as al-urf (custom), al-aql (reason), or al-ijma (consensus of the jurists) were employed.

In addition, Islamic law has developed areas of law that correspond to secular laws of contracts and torts.

Read more about this topic:  Islamic Economic Jurisprudence

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    [Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.
    Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)

    Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?
    Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)