International Islam and Economy Symposium-10
Memories Prof.Dr. Sabahattin Zaim
RE-THINKING ‘ISLAMIC ECONOMICS' in the 21st CENTURY
[ IN THEORY AND PRACTICE ]
8 -9 Aralık 2018, İstanbul Congress and Culture Center
Istanbul- Turkey
An ideal economic system can in broad strokes be defined as one that makes it possible to create a technology-driven structural change without commodifying the human lifeworld. Over the last two to three centuries, ex post, the students and practitioners of mainstream economics have failed in theorizing and establishing such a viable economic system to govern public-private intercourse in a sustainable manner, let alone to ensure social equity. Expectedly, this failure fed back, inter alia, into the outburst of the Great Depression of 1929, the Great Stagflation of the 1970s and, last but not the least, the Great Recession of today.
Islamic economics is a divinely-ordained system that has shaped a vast amount of people’s economic life in both public and private sphere from the 7th century onwards. The distinguishing feature of Islamic economics is the complementary alignment of its building blocks to realize economic efficiency and social equity in an inter-reinforcing manner. For example, the institutional complementarity between mudarabah (profit-and-loss sharing), interest prohibition and Zakah is geared to preclude speculative demand for money, increase marginal propensity to invest, make efficiency and innovation the basic catalysts of economic cycle, and equalize the distribution of income between haves and have-nots or between entrepreneurs and their financiers. In doing so, this complementarity strikes an intertemporal trade-off between short-run growth and long-run development in an Islamic economic model.
As a matter of fact, albeit this intercomplementary nature of Islamic economic institutions, contemporary Muslim societies have achieved limited success in putting them into practice with their inter-reinforcing dynamics. This limited success might be attributed to various reasons such as the Muslim countries’ underdeveloped or developing structures under the pressure of the capitalist world economy, their own pragmatism in applying these institutions, etc. What is evident though is that it has turned into a practical constraint on the effective understanding of Islamic economics par excellence between theory and practice.
Thus, at this critical turning point of the world economy, the Symposium aims to achieve mainly two interrelated objectives. The first is to re-explore the building blocks of Islamic economics in systemic terms to explain away the practical constraints on the effective understanding of it. And the second is to bring Islamic economics into the fore as the unique economic system that provides economic actors with an enduring normative rationality requisite to realize economic efficiency and social equity in an inter-reinforcing manner across times and spaces.
On behalf of the IKDER and Istanbul University, Center for Islamic Economics and Finance , we cordially invite you to participate in the 9th International Symposium of Islamic Economics. The Conference’s languages are Turkish and English and a translation service will be provided in the both languages throughout. Among the participants of the Symposium, inter alia, take place academics, intellectuals, bureaucrats, and the representatives of civic organizations.
Prof. Dr. Halis Yunus Ersöz,
Vice Rector, Istanbul University
I.U. Center for Islamic Economics and Finance
SymposiumTheme
RE-THINKING THE ISLAMIC ECONOMICS in the 21st CENTURY
[ IN THEORY AND PRACTICE ]
I. Theoretical and Institutional Foundations of Islamic Economics (IE)
1. Methodology of Islamic Economics
a. Classical and modern sources of Islamic economics
b. Rationality and institutional innovation in the IE
c. Information asymmetry and decision-making in the IE
2. Ethics in Islamic Economics
a. Ethics, the perception of value, and the institutional coherence in the IE
b. Ethics, property rights, and the equality of opportunity in the IE
c. Ethics and economic efficiency in the IE
3. Economic Policy in Islam
a. Monetary policy and full employment in the IE
b. Fiscal policy and the paradigm of economic development in the IE
c. Capital accumulation and the equal distribution of income in the IE
4. Search for a New Paradigm in Economics: An Islamic Perspective
a. Crisis and economic stability in the IE
b. International financial system and public regulation in the IE
c. What does Islamic economics propose to rid the world of the ongoing crisis?
5. Systemic Approach to Islamic Economics
a. The dynamics of inter-institutional complementarity in the IE
b. Intercomplementarity between economic growth and economic development in the IE
c. The paradigm of comparative advantages and the global equality of income in the IE
II. Variety of Islamic Economic Practices: Taking Stock, Looking Ahead
1. Islamic economic practices from the Golden Age to the Ottoman Empire
a. The Golden Age and theory-practice match in the IE
b. State-market relations in the early Islamic states
c. Monetary and fiscal policy practices in the early Islamic states
2. Islam and economics in the Ottoman Empire
a. A holistic approach to the Islamic economic institutions in the Empire
b. The production system and the Islamic financial instruments in the Empire
c. The causes of the crisis of revitalization in the Ottoman economy from Islamic economics perspective
3. Islamic economic practices from the 19th century onwards
a. The phases of revitalization in Islamic economic thought and practice
b. Industrialization and the Islamic economic practices
c. Knowledge Economy, The Fourth Industrial Revolution and the future of Islamic economic practices
4. Variety of Islamic economic practices
a. Islamic economic practices in evolutionary perspective
b. Contemporary examples of Islamic macro economic practices (Economic policy, international finance, regional integration, etc.)
c. Contemporary examples of Islamic micro economic practices (Interest-free banking, social self-help, Zakat, etc.)
5. Search for institutional innovation in Islamic economics
a. Institutional alternatives for consolidating theory-practice match in the IE
b. Eshâm and the search for micro-macro financial match in the IE
c. Potential institutional innovations to extend the scope of Islamic economics in the international economic division of labor