“If you don’t work to earn a living, how will you support your wife and children?
How will Allah provide for you if you haven’t changed your own life?”
A common misunderstanding about Islamic economics is the idea that being Muslim means being an “ascetic” — meaning a person who earns wealth but reduces their reliance on it for the sake of the afterlife. This has led many people to abandon their duty to earn a living, forcing their families to scrape by on next to nothing, just so they won’t have to work themselves too tired to provide.
Looking at Islamic principles, “reward is a matter of deeds, including the benefit we bring about in the present world (dunya) through our actions” — from the performance of religious duties to helping society, even helping a thirsty animal. So, if we have more material wealth, we can help more people. Consider this: if we build a hospital for the sick, or a school for children, how far will the reward follow us, even after we have passed away?
However, Islam is also not “materialism,” because materialism is where individuals accumulate capital for themselves, which is a problem in today’s world. Islam is closer to “utilitarianism” — that is, individuals accumulate wealth to use for the benefit of the community. But what’s different in Islamic economics is that accumulating wealth for the benefit of the community is not done to satisfy the community, but to satisfy God. This means it does not shift according to what the community wants — for example, if the community wants a gambling den, that is not Islamic economics.
In Islamic economics, then, the pattern is “the individual strives to develop themselves and accumulate capital for the benefit of the community, in accordance with the command of God” — this is the foundational principle of Islamic economics.
Islam holds that we do not own any capital or wealth in this world; rather, we have a duty to steward it according to the rights we have been given, for the benefit of family, society, the community, and the world. Therefore, destroying the environment, which does not belong to us, is a sin in Islam. Islam emphasizes that when we die, we cannot take our wealth with us, so that wealth was never truly ours — we only have a duty to preserve and use it for the greatest benefit, to build good for all people, who are the descendants of the Prophet Adam, regardless of their present religion, ethnicity, ideology, belief, or gender.
So, if you are a Muslim, develop yourself to have the capacity and ability to support yourself. And if you are a man, be a Muslim man with enough money and a stable enough position to support a wife. And if you become wealthier, help society more, by developing public benefit for all people — not only for the Muslim community or any particular group.
One day we may see Muslim schools that offer scholarships to people of every religion and no religion, just as Christians and Buddhists have offered scholarships to Muslims. We may see more hospitals run by Muslims that help the disadvantaged of every religion, or education funds that help everyone, in the name of Islam, in the name of Allah, glorified and exalted is He.
Develop yourself, develop your position and income, so that you can pass Islam on to society through the good deeds you carry out for society — for the sake of Thai society as a whole, for humanity, and for Allah, glorified and exalted is He. That is Islamic economics.
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