I’m looking forward to Timur Kuran’s presentation at a Cato Institute conference next month of the results of his years of research and thinking about the prospects for liberty in Islamic cultures. If you’re interested in that set of questions, you should buy and read his book Islam and Mammon: The Economic Predicaments of Islamism. (It’s published by Princeton University Press and available everywhere, including Laissez Faire Books, which also carries lots of other important new books at major discounts, such as Douglass C. North’s latest work Understanding the Process of Economic Change.)
I’ve heard from some sources that Islam may be the most pro-business of all the major religions. Prophet Muhammad was himself a merchant and apparently prohibited price controls and encouraged trade and commerce.
http://www.ncpa.org/edo/bb/2001/bb091901.html
Would you happen to know anything else about this subject?
That is an intersting comment. The first thing that occurs to me when I think about Islam and business is the prohibition on charging interest. I know very little about the history of this however – perhaps it is a modern rule? I believe there are alternative ways that some banks use to finance new ventures because of this – perhaps rent-to-own or similar schemes.
Most interesting questions….you’ll have to read Timur’s book! In the meantime, you could find some interesting essays, such as Michael Young at http://reason.com/ml/ml112901.shtml, Timur Kuran’s essay on “Islamic Subeconomics and the Islamic Subeconomy” from the Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Fall 1995), pp. 155-173 at http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~kuran/abstracts/articles/ar_28A.pdf , and his essay on “Islam and Underdevelopment: An Old Puzzle Revisited” from the Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 153 (March 1997), pp. 47-71 at http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~kuran/abstracts/articles/ar_31A.pdf .
Oh! Another little anecdote someone told me about a while ago. In nearly every muslim town and city, a call to prayer is announced loudly whenever it is time to perform one of the five daily prayers. What the Prophet implemented is to have the call to prayer announced twice, once about 5 minutes before the actual time. The justification for this is to allow the merchants in the market enough time to finish and conclude their dealings. Pro-business indeed.