The discontents of Islamic economic morality

Abstract

The main purpose of Islamic economics is not to improve economic performance. Notwithstanding the claim that Islamic economics provides a superior alternative to the secular economic doctrines of the time, its real purpose is to help prevent Muslims from assimilating into the emerging global culture whose core elements have a Western pedigree. Moreover, in pursuing cultural protectionism, Islamic economics depends minimally on controlling the way Muslims behave in the marketplace. Its chief instrument for fighting assimilation is the guilt that it fosters by characterizing certain universal economic practices as un-Islamic. Muslims, seeking atonement for economic choices they perceive as possibly sinful, contribute to religious causes and undertake acts of religious piety. In the process, they inflate the observed religiosity of the Muslim world. And they magnify the apparent constituency for extending Islam's temporal domain and authority.