378 chapter nine
al-Shatibi, Khan classifies these needs as: life, property (wealth), faith
(religion), intellect (mind) and posterity (marriage). All such goods
that have the power to promote these five elements as said to be
having muslahafor human beings. This, by implication, stresses that
muslahais not the same as utility, while the former considers what
is good for the welfare of society as a whole first in shaping the pat-
tern of consumption, the latter focuses on what is good for the indi-
vidual consumer in particular in determining their priorities for
consumption. Moreover, while this is all related to what the consumer
spends on consumption in this world, he is also expected to spend
in the cause of God for the sake of the hereafter and to balance his
spending between the two realms (ibid.).
The differences between altruism and socio-economic analysis on
the one hand and the Islamic analysis of consumer behaviour on
the other have been of concern to other writers on the subject. El-
Ashker stresses aspects of similarities between the two theories as well
as of differences (El-Ashker, 1983). Conventional economists, to begin
with, have been criticised by both Western socio-economists and
Islamic economists. They are charged with the neglect of ethical val-
ues in their economic analysis in general as well as that of consumer
behaviour. Such a criticism is not entirely well founded as the analy-
sis of altruism has been considered by Collard for example, a con-
ventional economist (Collard, 1978). Socio-economists criticism focuses
on the degree of emphasis rather than on the complete omission. In
general, however, the behavioural assumptions in conventional eco-
nomics are criticised by Western socio-economists who advocate that
more emphasis should be given to the social responsibility of the con-
sumer, with a considerable regard to the interest of the surrounding
community. They suggest, instead, a social image where the con-
sumer is regarded as a “homo-economicus-humanus” (Nitsch, 1982).
Some went even further to suggest linking economic issues with social
ethics from Christian thought or “some equivalent set of teaching
such as in Islam” (McKee, 1982). Socio-economists and Islamic econ-
omists, it seems, agree on one thing: the inclusion of the social
responsibility of the consumer to the surrounding community in the
analysis of consumer behaviour. Despite the acknowledgement of this
similarity, both groups of economists, Western socio-economists and
Islamic economists, differ on the following in particular (El-Ashker,
1983 and 1985):