A Critique of Akhtar’s Model of an Economic Economy

In an article entitled “Modelling the Economic Growth of anIslamic Economy,”l M. Ramazan Akhtar presented a mathematicalmodel that subjects Allahs attributes to measurement and underminesthe cause of the Islamization of knowledge, which he intended toserve. In his article, there are several flaws, mistakes, and inconsistenciesthat deserve comment and criticism. This paper has examinedcritically Akhtar’s model and found it to be neither informative norpredictive. Before presenting the critique, however, I would like tocomment on some of the general weaknesses of the article.In the opening paragraph (p. 491), Akhtar says: “Growth dependson several factors, among them a consistent increase in the amount ofphysical goods and services produced over a given period of time.This is usually taken as an index of economic growth.” Although economicgrowth is defined and measured by the increase in the amountof goods and services produced over a given period of time, it doesnot imply that the former depends on the latter. There is no cause andeffect relationship between the two.In his “Review of the Literature” (p. 492), Akhtar makes a generalstatement that Muslim economists use the terms “economic growth”and “economic development” interchangeably. The economic literaturethat has been produced since the early 1960s makes a clear distinctionbetween these two terms and views economic growth as anecessary, but not a sufficient, condition for economic development(Clower 1966). Most Muslim economists hold this mainstream view.If there are still some using the terms interchangeably, they are theexceptions.In the second paragraph on page 495, Akhtar gives an Englishtranslation of Qur’an 39:9. In fact, this is a translation of 41:10-aserious mistake and not a typographical error.The last paragraph on page 491 reads: “The hypothesis is examinedtheoretically because statistical data for empirical analysis is not available.”But at the end of this paragraph, he asserts: “Analytical resultsshow that moral factors make a positive contribution to both income ...