Human Development and Muslim Countries: Need fulfillment versus basic universal income from Islamic perspective

Human beings are the most important source of economic progress as well as end users of its fruits. The performance of both the sectors – public and private – is a function of workers’ efficiency – moral and professional. The moral dimension is internal to human beings. It is difficult to measure and separate from the professional. The objective criteria in material terms, as opposed to spiritual, emphasize the reduction of income inequalities and eradication of poverty. But it misses a vital causative ingredient - inequality of access to knowledge and information which is essentially systemic and structural in modern social orders. In mundane measures for promoting equality, the concern for meeting the basic needs of the masses – food, clothing, shelter, education and health care – has long remained on the scene. With the turn of the century, however, need fulfillment seems losing ground to the guaranteeing of a universal minimum income to each national ensuring a reasonably decent living. This paper looks at the two alternatives from an Islamic perspective. It supports in conclusion need fulfillment as a better measure to universal income for ameliorating the fate of the poor.