350 chapter nine
documents. Consequently, in the shadow of economics and indeed
of that of Sharì"ah studies, Islamic economics grew, referred to some-
times as “an Islamic Approach”, other times as “an Islamic economic
system”, or very often as an economic issue “from an Islamic per-
spective”, rather than an independent subject of its own merits. It
would take two decades or so for Islamic economics to be legitimized
as an independent area of study.
In the absence of an organized institution that would coordinate
the work on Islamic economics literature, several factors served as
instigators to the development of the work on the subject. Five main
factors could be said to have helped boost the development of Islamic
economic literature at that stage: (a) the personal motivation of the
writers themselves who were driven by their own religious zeal to
promote Islamic economics, or the Islamic approach to economics,
as a means of promoting the religious cause, (b) sponsoring acade-
mic and non-academic institutions and organisations that had the
pro-motion of Islam within their set of missions, (c) religious societies,
(d) Muslim students associations, and (e) dedicated publishing houses.
Below is a brief evaluation of the influencing role of these factors.
The Personal Factor
Prior to 1976, particularly up to the late sixties, a great deal of writ-
ing on Islamic economics was mainly the outcome of individual
efforts that were motivated chiefly by a personal and religious impe-
tus. The personal and academic traits of the early writer on Islamic
economics were of almost a unified nature. Up to the first half of the
twentieth century, and well into the nineteen sixties, early writers on
the subject were mainly: (a) educated in Islamic religious studies, (b)
either religious scholars, such as Sharì"ah jurists, or (c) economists
by education and profession, (d) economists with mostly Western
economics education either in their home countries or abroad,
(e) all religiously motivated, driven by their zeal to defend Islam
first, in addition to their inborn academic curiosity, and (f ) all with
a persisting urge to prove to the doubting Muslims and non-Muslims
that Islam can still work in the modern twentieth century, that it
has the ingredients to accommodate new changes in modern soci-
ety and that it has the ability to serve as a vehicle to foster eco-
nomic development, run governments and re-establish nations. Above
all, these scholars had one aim in mind: to rid Muslims society from