An Agenda for Muslim Economists: A Historico-Inductive Approach

ABSTRACT. Islamic economists preoccupation with the deductive approach needs being moderated by a greater recourse to induction, especially in discussing the role of values in the economic system. Values have played an important role in the Christian West in the past, not withstanding the current advocacy of moral relativism. Every social decision implies a value judgment. Values permeate the contemporary body politic as they did in the past. An empirical approach will, therefore, broaden the scope of Islamic economics and increase its interaction with others. I In seeking to devise the economic institutions of an Islamic society two distinct approaches are possible. First, one may go back to fundamental Islamic principles and deduce there from the criteria that Islamic economic institutions must satisfy. A second approach is to observe the variety of economic institutions that actually exist and screen them on the basis of their concordance with Islamic economic philosophy. The first approach is deductive in bent and has been applied on a multitude of ocassions. (1) It is the aim of this paper to guide our thoughts to the second or inductive approach