A Fundamental Flaw in the Construction of Islamic Economics: Providing Islamic Justifications within Conventional Framework

This paper has a simple objective. It attempts to highlight a common but fundamental flaw in the construction of the present Islamic economic discipline. The flaw relates to the long-standing practice of using Islamic justifications to rid the conventional economic discipline of the so-called “unIslamic†elements as the basic approach used in constructing and extending the Islamic economic discipline. This flaw is fundamental because such efforts, short of dismissing its framework in its entirety and replacing it with a completely Islamic one, would not yield a truly Islamic entity in its place. This is because the conventional concepts, definitions and framework do not corne with independent attributes, but are rather attached strongly to conventional philosophical and epistemological underpinnings. Merely furnishing Islamic justifications, but yet basing on and presenting within the conventional philosophical and epistemological framework embodied by conventional concepts and definitions, cannot yield a discipline that can be considered truly Islamic in its full sense.