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0 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Topic: The Paradigm of Islamic Political Economy: An Institutionalist Analysis

of Myth and Reality.

1.2 Author: Akan Taner, (2016).

1.3 Subject Area: History of Economic Ideas

2.0 SUMMARY OF THE ARTICLE

“The Paradigm of Islamic Political Economy: An Institutionalist Analysis of Myth

and Reality.” Essentially attempts to explain the vulnerability between the

oversimplified and mythicizing discernments over the hypothesis and customs of

Islamic political economy. The focal point of this article is the level of hypothesis,

beginning and results of textures and irregularities between its hypothetical

recommendations and the traditions by the Muslim countries (pg.1). Akan perceives

that the characteristic common agreement that brings together Muslims as one society

independent of their race, status or identity is ontologically restricting not just for its

force of inspiration for the Muslims to build the useful methods for executing its

raison d'etre yet additionally for its sacredly destined force of hypothetical guideline

dependent on the actual rule of Tawhid (pg.5).

Akon opens the analysis by taking note of the fact that in Islam, a property owner has

the practical yet not total responsibility for material welfare like merchandise, cash,

and land. Based on the article, this standard champions itself in the accepted authority

of Allâh over the Muslims to uphold their monetary exchanges under the laws of

Islamic standards (pg.5). Underlining the possibility that a Muslim is an individual

who acts considering the moral, standardizing, and formal conditionalities of Islamic

morals and the Islamic code of law, the Shariah, Akan sees taqwa-focused open

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activity, the participation, sharing, fortitude and morals as the major sociative

standards for Muslim people (pg.6).

In section three: "The Islamic State, Democracy and Political Governance" Akan

tends to the idea of the Muslim people (ummah), Islamic law (shari'ah) and the

Khalifah, as the top of the Muslim people (pg.9). This article is composed using a

worldwide framework level of analysis which focuses on all-inclusiveness in looking

at and giving a clarification to overall phenomenon. In any case, Akan's idea of

Islamic popular government or democracy that all Muslims are the vicegerents of

Allâh on the earth and are collectively considered liable for the execution of Shari'ah

fundamentally demonstrates that there is restricted regard for political rights and

common freedoms, frequently in an era of corruption, weak rule of law, ethnic and

religious hardship, and single-party predominance (pg.12).

The author attempts to set the boundaries of his analysis by opening another

conversation on Islamic majority rule government yet his contentions are just

reasonable for Islam countries and their relations with one another; be that as it may,

as demonstrated on account of other countries like the West and Europe, the extent of

Akan’s article is as yet not steady with his analysis and clarification of world

phenomenon (pg.13).

3.0 CRITIQUE OF THE ARTICLE

The article claims that popular government is a means for this end, not for an end in

itself (pg. 10) and that the activities of casting a ballot and being voted ought to be

done to serve this extreme need, not really to choose the best rulers to secure the most

elevated material welfare to the citizens (pg.11). Moreover, Akan contends Islamic

economic matters is established in the development of material headway under the

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support of a regularizing foundation that outfits market entertainers with the

wellspring of profound guideline, the (business) morals (pg.11). I concur with Akan's

first contention however I discover his subsequent one to be conflicting with what's

going on in the present Islamic monetary issues. The advanced variation of Islamic

economic matters is an improvement that started during the 1970s with an elective

framework comprehension to the current industrialist methods of production.

Islamic economics held that the capitalist economic order was responsible for the

failure of economic development and environmental issues in developing countries.

The issue of ethics and the value in Islamic economics is neither here nor there. The

article on hand confirms that ethics makes up the normative implication of economic

value and determines the long-term sustainability of the Islamic optimum in

economics (pg.12). However, then again the author discusses Keynesian financial

matters and expresses that social ideal in Islam is the co-foundation and co-sustenance

of effectiveness and equity. The author doesn't investigate the original astuteness in

uncovering the foundational and alternative framework of Islamic economic aspects

regardless whether such a system is a possible or not.

From a critical standpoint, the article quotes Ahmad (1979) that the Muslim world

consists of economically underdeveloped, albeit resource-rich, countries that

underutilise their human and capital stocks and govern them inefficiently and

unequally, resulting in the embedding of poverty, stagnation, backwardness, and

imbalanced sectoral and regional development (pg. 22). This appears to be somewhat

confusing to some level. A sharp reader would understand that the article eventually

concedes the moral base of the Islamic economic framework offers the value

framework through which it administers all types of financial connection in the public

arena.

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The Islamic order, all in all, through its moral economic standards provides "the

economic framework with its premise and objectives on one hand, and with its adages

and standards on the other". The author expresses that in humanity, Muslim or non-

Muslim, is inclined to committing unfairness and behaving nonoptimally and that an

entrepreneur 'must' enter into disputes, be astute, take part in consistent quarrelling,

and have incredible diligence (pg. 13).

The last segment of the article: “Theoretical Facts versus Practical Conduct: Why

Contemporary Muslim Nations Fail?” provides a sense of stability on the key

principle of Islamic developmentalism between individualism and collectivism. Akan

cites Ibn-i Khaldun, a Muslim political economist, who most influentially

contextualised this inconsistency into the evolutionary dynamics of Islamic nations

(pg.31). He states that division of labour lays the foundations of a civilisational

institutionalisation rooted in the unification of means and ends by a ‘human social

organisation’ to sustain their livelihood altogether (pg.31).

This segment appears to claim that when a political prevalence is set up, the imposts

and appraisals that comprise the tax revenue of the administration are moderately low,

and this initiates the subjects to embark on profitable exercises (pg. 33). This feels

somewhat obsolete, albeit the fundamental analysis at the foundational stage to

development of a civilisation are as yet applicable. The last segment is a foundation of

the concurrence of material and profound fundamentals of Islamic political economy.

Nonetheless, to legitimize this assertion, Akan need to center and analyze one

economic framework from another and look at their major components. In observing

the present reality, and the fundamental establishments of an Islamic political

economy, it is obvious to see that Akan is perfect. However, the author ought to

explain and restrict his scope further to the Islamic developmentalism in giving his

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logical knowledge into the supposed underdeveloped structure of Muslim-majority

nations.

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