islamic economic renaissance 375wealth. Collectivization or nationalization, whatever the term might
be, boils down to limiting private ownership at the discretion of the
state and transferring designated parts to state ownership. Whether
this process is acceptable to Islam or not is another question. An
affirmative answer to the question is difficult to find in the Islamic
literature. Jurists on the whole agree on the desirability of markets,
and in that private ownership may be implied. Arguments for this
are based on evidence from Aœadìthin the Sunnah (see Chapter 2).
Even the jurists who stressed the Islamic legitimacy of the interven-
tion by the state in the market, qualified their opinion with the pro-
viso that (a) the market conditions are interfered with, (b) traders
have misused their power to manipulate the market by deviating
from the rules of the Sharì"ah, by for example exercising monopoly
and hoarding goods to influence prices, and that (c) this has lead to
a state of abnormality in the operational conditions of the market. All
are external circumstances that have affected the market environment.
Only then, the state may interfere, and its interference would be in
so far as these manipulative conditions exist, beyond which the inter-
vention would cease with the return of the market to normality, (see
for example, Ibn-Taymìya, Public Duties in Islam, in bibliography).
Modern Muslim economists also express their concern. In his fore-
word to Naqvi’s treatise we find Khurshid Ahmad, having admired
the author and welcomed the work, expressing his concern that,
“There is very little evidence, logical or canonical, to suggest that
“collective ownership” is or has ever been the Islamic norm. More
careful and rigorous differentiation between private ownership based
on the concept of amanah (trusteeship) and the unrestricted private
property and enterprise of capitalism as well as the collectivization
of property in different brands of socialism deserves to be made.
Similarly, a clear distinction between equity and equality, not to say
of “absolute equality”, would have to be made by Muslim econo-
mists”, (Ahmad, in Naqvi 1981). Naqvi’s discussion provides valu-
able insights into the conceptual basis of Islamic economics. His fresh
ideas, and sometimes controversial views, merit further extension and
further discussion.
Consumer Behaviour
The behaviour of consumers had been of concern to early jurists,
as indeed had been many other issues in the Sharì"ah, even if they
were not economists as such a discipline did not exist in the twelfth