islamic economic renaissance 399Turning our attention to economic freedom, we find al-Sadr in
line with the main-stream of Islamic jurists in arguing that though
economic freedom is permitted in Islam, it is not unconditional. The
conditions come from two distinctive sources: self and state. Self con-
ditions emanate from the belief of the individual in the ethical code
of conduct provided in the Sharì"ah. This increases with the devel-
opment of the individual’s religious conscience and Islamic beliefs.
Emanating from al-Sadr’s ethical approach to economics, a consid-
erable weight is given by him to this source of conditioning values.
Conditions emerge from the right of the state to apply the Sharì"ah
rules in any possible deviation from these rules on the part of the
individual that may cause harm to society. Individuals’ religious con-
scientiousness is far more important to al-Sadr than the state’s cor-
rective agencies. In the absence of a government that is concerned
with the application of Sharì"ah to the society, in favour of a less
Islamic application of government, individuals’ diligence becomes the
substitution.
In discussing the distribution of income, al-Sadr, in emphasizing
the importance role of labour in the process of production, stresses
the significance of rewarding labour as the most crucial factor. Though
this sounds as if he came very near to the Marxist theory, particularly
in stressing the role of the suppliers of labour as opposed to that of
the providers of capital, he diverted from it in basing his arguments
on the Islamic moral ideals. The society, to him, is obliged to provide
for not only the able and capable but also for the poor and the needy
if their conditions of poverty is more related to weaknesses and inabil-
ity than to laziness and idleness. With the stipulation of Zakàh in
the core of the Islamic doctrine, the Islamic economic system is dis-
tinguished from both Marxism and capitalism.
In his Iqtisàduna al-Sadr has demonstrated a depth of knowledge
and a profundity of thinking on both economics and Sharì"ah mat-
ters. One may speculate how his thinking would have developed had
he not been executed in 1980 under the orders of the Iraqi politi-
cal authority at that time (Wilson, 1998).
The Future of Islamic Economics
Mixing the reality of the present day Islam with the Islam of yes-
terday with its glory when governments were powerful and set-backs