Open AccessConfronting Climate Change and Fostering Islamic Economic Development Through Awqāf
Author(s) -
Waleed ElAnsary
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of king abdulaziz university-islamic economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1658-4244
pISSN - 1018-7383
DOI - 10.4197/islec.31-2.6
Subject(s) - islam , vitality , harmony (color) , environmental ethics , materialism , civilization , reductionism , metaphysics , sociology , dialectic , ecology , social science , political science , epistemology , law , philosophy , theology , art , visual arts , biology
The modern world’s ecological and economic crises result from itsreductionist, mechanistic, and materialistic worldview. This study of Islamiceconomics – based on its metaphysical and cosmological sciences – reveals a path toeconomic justice and ecological equilibrium that requires recovering the Islamicintellectual heritage and establishing corresponding Islamic scientific, technological,economic, and other social structures for spiritually meaningful work and integraldevelopment; a role awqāf traditionally played in Islamic civilization that needs to berecovered today. This path, which was lost during the colonial period, requiresintegrating the findings of modern science into higher orders of knowledge, allowingman to live in harmony with himself, his community, and nature. This achieves both“vertical” and “horizontal” equilibrium, the intersection of which symbolizes theintegration of all of life around a sacred center. This can also increase the number andvitality of contemporary awqāf, which Syed Khalid Rashid so rightly calls for in hislead article (Rashid, 2018).