50 Fundamental Concepts in Islamic Economics and Finance
Islamic economics is an economic system that addresses the welfare of people based on the principles of tawhid, through justice, sharing, and trust principles. This field aims to carry out economic activities on the basis of Islamic rules by considering the balance between this world and the hereafter. While Islamic finance envisages an interest-free financial structure in accordance with the principles of Shari’ah, Islamic social finance, which is a sub-field, aims to increase social welfare through instruments such as zakat, sadaqah, waqf, and qard al hasan based on solidarity and cooperation. The importance of contracts forms the basis of Islamic finance. Contracts should be free from excessive uncertainty (gharar), based on risk sharing, and have a fair structure. Within this framework, many types of contracts have been legitimately applied in Islam for many years and have played roles in solving various needs. For example, while the parties share profits and losses with partnership models such as mudaraba and musharaka, contracts such as salam and istisna provide support for trade. In the modern era, Islamic financial institutions are organizations that actively use these contracts and operate under different institutional models. Islamic financial institutions were established to support individual and social development and have been providing financial products and services to millions of people in different countries for many years. Islamic finance sector, which comes to the fore with Islamic banking, has expanded with the contributions of sub-fields such as capital markets and the insurance sector. Islamic economics and finance have attracted attention not only from the practitioners but also from academic circles and the general society in recent years. For this reason, there is a need for the prominent concepts and leading institutions to be addressed in an understandable manner. Therefore, in this book, 50 fundamental concepts in Islamic economics and finance have been addressed by experts in the field and provide a basic introduction to those who want to gain knowledge on these subjects.
Keywords: Islamic economics, Islamic finance, Islamic economic history, Contracts, Institutions