Economic Rationalism and Consumption: Islamic Perspective

Abstract

This paper presents a comparative view of Islamic economic rationalism and consumption framework to its counterpart’s conventional capitalist and socialist economic system. In conventional economic system, only self-interest and rationality of the consumer is the main principle to maximize utility whereas moral, religious, national, historical, cultural and social values are absent here. Consequently, the consumers enjoy sovereignty with little or no intervention of regulatory authority to maximize the utility. On the contrary, Islamic economic system designs its rationality and consumption principle in moderation that is far away from extremism where freedom and regulation is moderately recognized.  Therefore, Islamic rationality encourages the consumers to maximize his utility by insuring religious, national, historical, cultural and social values. Besides, conventional economics have no treatment to immoral activities of consumer while Islamic economics derived from the Holy Quran and Hadith offers rewards and punishments for moral and immoral activities in worldly and hereafter life.

Keywords: Rationalism, Consumption, Islamic Economics, Consumer Sovereignty, Moral and Social Values

JEL Classification: A13, B41, D11, P46, P51