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This study aims to theoretically explore and examine the possibility of developing an Islamic social welfare function (ISWF) within the Islamic moral economy (IME) frame by going beyond the traditional fiqhī approach. It focuses on issues of preference ordering and utility through the normative dimension of Islamic ontology, as expressed and articulated within the IME.

Being a theoretical paper, a conceptual and critical discursive approach is used in this paper.

To establish an ISWF, a narrow juristic approach remains inadequate; there is a need to integrate the substantive morality to complement the juristic approach to achieve the ihsani process as the ultimate individual objective, which makes an ISWF possible. As the scattered debate on the topic concentrates mainly on the juristic approach, the main contribution of this study is to present a model in which juristic and moralist positions endogenized and augmented to constitute ISWF.

As there is a limited amount of research available on the subject matter, this paper will be an important theoretical contribution. In addition, this study develops an IME approach rather than fiqh-based approach used in the available research, which makes it novel.

As an essential component of Islamic governance for ensuring religious compliance, Shari’ah annual reports (SARs) play an important role in providing communication between Shari’ah board (SB) members and stakeholders. This paper aims to determine the ethical disclosure in SARs to identify how close the Shari’ah disclosure to the standards set by AAOIFI and also substantive morality of Islam. The research also aims to examine the factors determining disclosure performance.

Two disclosure indices are developed to generate data from the SARs: the AAOIFI standards for Shari’ah governance index for form related approach, an Islamic ethicality augmented index reflecting on substantive morality approach. The sample consists of 41 Islamic banks from 15 different countries for the period of 2007–2014. Sampled 305 SARs were examined through disclosure analysis in line with the two indices developed for this study. The econometric analysis was run to identify the factors determining disclosure performance.

The findings suggest that AAOIFI guidelines have an influence on the level of disclosure, even if Islamic banks have not adopted them. However, the level of disclosure for the ethically augmented index is found to be very limited with reliance on general statements in most of the cases. As part of determining factors, the popularity of Shari’ah scholars is significant for both indices, while the existence of an internal Shari’ah auditing department holds some explanatory power. The adoption of AAOIFI standards at the country level, the regulatory quality and the duration of Sharīʿah-compliance are particularly deterministic factors in terms of complying with AAOIFI standards for SARs.

Although SB is the most crucial division of corporate governance in Islamic banks in terms of securing the “Islamic” identity of these institutions, their most important communication instrument, namely, SAR, has not been explored sufficiently, alongside an insufficient attempt to constitute Islamic corporate governance. Initially, this study attempted to constitute an Islamic corporate governance framework as a theoretical construct, which provides context for the empirical part of the research and this should be considered a novel approach. Second, the empirical part of the research aims to fill the gap observed in the literature such as small sample size and index construction-related matters. This research is conducted with a larger sample size as compared to the available studies in the literature and it has developed two indices for disclosure analysis along with developing an Islamic morality-based index beside an index based on AAOIFI standards.

This paper uses the case of Islamic banking in Amman, Jordan, to assess the wide moral range of expectations, levels of satisfaction, and means of evaluating banks’ “Islamicness.”

The information is gathered from interviews conducted during over 21 months of ethnographic research and one month in participant observation and research access as an intern at the Middle East Islamic Bank (MEIB) in Amman, Jordan.

I found three modes for evaluating “Islamicness” when actors decide whether or not to become customers of Islamic banks.

These modes demonstrate that Islamic banking is no longer the cultural protectionism of a relatively homogeneous community of Muslims. Rather it is a fraught and tense field for actors’ debates about types of moralities in the markets and modes of moral assessments of “Islamicness.”

The amplification of the individual and individual choice and authority in the moral assessments of Islamic banking may ultimately serve to unseat prior dichotomous theoretical framings of morality’s presence or absence as “Islamic” or “not Islamic” and “good” and “bad.” By unleashing to individuals the construction of morality in the markets, moral rights and wrongs, and moral evaluations, fragmentation of moral consensus in market practices will occur.

To establish these definitions we revisit expression (5.3) of Chapter 5. Since this expression describes a phenomenological model of knowledge transmission from its epistemic origin to the world-system by learning processes, therefore, we first summarize the arguments on what can be the nature of (Ω,S) in this expression. Our arguments were centered on the contrasting nature of moral absolutism and the ethical meaning so derived. This axiomatic core of the arguments stood up against moral relativism of both the rationalist and religious types on which is premised a different meaning of ethics.

The purpose of this paper is to lay down the methodological structure of the epistemology of tawhid (Oneness of Allah). In this paper, the meaning of tawhid also refers to the monotheistic unity of knowledge (consilience) in the cast of its organic pairing by circular causation relations between the moral and material possibilities. The paper thereby raises the critique of mainstream economic reasoning and its imitation by existing Islamic economics. Consequently, by the ontological, epistemological and phenomenological foundation of tawhidi methodological worldview, an altogether new socio-scientific reasoning in generality and economic reasoning in particular is introduced.

The socio-scientific methodological reasoning of unity of knowledge according to the tawhidi methodological worldview is introduced contrary to the inept rational choice postulates of mainstream economic reasoning and its imitation by existing notions of Islamic economics. The method of instructing students in the light of this approach according to Tawhidi Islamic Economics (TIE) is introduced from the existing literature.

The existing nature of mainstream economics and its imitation by Islamic economics is critically deconstructed and replaced by the true epistemological, ontological and phenomenological perspectives of TIE in the world of learning. Some inner properties of such a methodological study of TIE are laid bare for further investigation.

This is the first paper of its kind in this journal to expound the original and most creative methodological worldview that Islamic economics must bear. This is the foundation of the development of the true stance of Islamic economics and finance.

Reflections about fostering moral and spiritual qualities are the key point of view when considering the essence of religious beliefs in the theories about moral foundations. As a part of the spiritual values aimed at instructing human beings, mainly Muslims, tawakkul (trust in God) and tawhid (belief to God) are to be enhanced to situate the core religious foundation as the basic element for life at individual and social levels in the Muslim communities. This paper aims to critically examine tawakkul and tawhid to strengthening divine values as a foundation of self-regulation in religiosity.

This paper aims to critically examine tawakkul and tawhid to strengthening divine values as a foundation of self-regulation in religiosity. The literature review from referred journals was conducted using keywords on divine values, self-regulation in religiosity and tawakkul and tawhid. In order to obtain such literature, the critical analysis was conducted by organising substantive keywords. Then, extraction of data with deep literature analysis was carried out to interpret the findings. The key elements were analysed and synthesised into a new interpretation, conceptualisation and modelling of conceptualising tawakkul and tawhid concerns for sustainability of divine values for self-regulation in religiosity.

The finding reveals that the significance of conceptualising tawakkul and tawhid refers to as sustainability of divine involvement, as an emotionally religious commitment and as a consciously held religious discipline. Primarily, as the religious principle founded on a basic element transferred into individual and social levels, Islamic insights from tawakkul and tawhid offer valuable considerations for the understanding and amelioration of development by contributing a model that bases the “mental” and “spiritual” elements on a religious foundation, as an ultimate component for faith, a religious commitment and a belief in an authoritarian God to foster moral and spiritual qualities amidst the society.

Regulating tawakkul and tawhid to enhance dynamically constructive system for moral personality through critical examination as a foundation for religious-based self-regulation offers valuable considerations for the understanding and amelioration of development. Critical examination of tawakkul and tawhid as a foundation for religious self-regulation is considerably engaged to enhance the understanding and amelioration of development. It does so by contributing a model that bases mental and spiritual elements on a religious foundation, as an ultimate component for faith, religious commitment and belief in an authoritarian God to foster moral and spiritual qualities among human beings.

Learning field of events is characterized by the occurrenceof random and uncertain phenomena, all of which have probabilistic distributions. The meaning of learning is exchange by interdependence between interacting agents. Such agents are both the human entities and the non‐human ones. Thus, in a learning field of probabilistic events there are complex forms of interaction between the domains of mind (human cognition) and matter (world‐system). The purpose of this paper is to formalize and study such interactions by the epistemology of unity of being and becoming of relations between given variables in analytical perspective.

The critical argumentation and search in this paper leads to the premise of the episteme of unity of knowledge. It is found singularly in the doctrine of the paired universe of the Quran. The episteme of oneness of the monotheistic law and its consequential forms establish the axiomatic basis of the criterion function representing the phenomenon of probabilistic learning field. The authors refer to this criterion as wellbeing. It conceptualizes and measures the degree of unity of being and becoming that exists between the variables of a specific problem under investigation.

The results of this study formalize the probabilistic model of learning. The simulated evaluation of the probabilistic form of the wellbeing function brings out the synonymous results between unity of knowledge and its impact on the unity of the world‐system induced by the knowledge‐flows. Such a transformation of a world‐system presents the meaning of endogenous (or systemically self‐regenerated) ethics and morality in such broader fields of choices involving embedded learning systems.

The dynamics of pervasive complementarities arising from learning by unity of knowledge, and considerations of ethics and morality remain exogenous factors in economic theory. This paper, instead, has formalized ethical endogeneity in models of decision‐making with probabilistic learning fields that remain embedded in complementarities by interaction and integration across economic, social and ethical systems.

There are the interesting words of Myrdal in respect of the universality and commonness of what a scientific problem means:From then on more definitely I came to see that in reality there are no economic, sociological, psychological problems, but just problems and they are all mixed and composite. In research the only permissible demarcation is between relevant and irrelevant conditions. The problems are regularly also political and have moreover to be seen in historical perspective. (Myrdal, 1979, p. 106)

This paper aims to undertake a critical evaluation of the purpose and objective of Islamic Law, namely, maqasid as-shari’ah, as it has evolved in Islamic scholastic experience. But, the greater philosophy and potential of maqasid as-shari’ah within the great design of the monotheistic law, sunnat-Allah, is explained. Such explanation is carried out in the light of the core of Islamic epistemology that directly induces Islamic Law.

This critical evaluation is pursued in the light of the epistemological worldview and its methodical formalism of unity of knowledge contra a differentiated and conflicting view of human experience in rationalism. The episteme of unity of knowledge is Tawhid as the law of everything in the precept of unity as understood by the monotheistic law, sunnat-Allah. In the light of the extendibility of maqasid as-shari’ah across the relationally unifying domain of sunnat-Allah, the potentiality of shari’ah in terms of res extensa (epistemic extension) and res cogitans (cognitive capacity) is discussed.

Various occidental thoughts in this quest for extendibility of the epistemic totality are critically examined by the Tawhidi monotheistic law. The universality of the Tawhidi law of monotheism in respect of its characteristics of res extensa and res cogitans is studied to bring out the potentiality of maqasid as-shari’ah. Thereby, the new vision of inter-systemic extensions across diverse domains of intellection interactively unified together is formalized. This formalism goes beyond the existing limits of maqasid as-shari’ah confined as it is to worldly socioeconomic affairs (muamalat).

A much broader investigation is opened up by this paper that can be extended by academic work.

The practical support of the criticism against both the idea of shari’ah-compliance and the incomplete implication of maqasid as-shari’ah as presently understood among Islamic scholars is carried out by a detailed empirical work. The extension to the choice of a new financial instrument of Foreign Trade Financing Certificate is introduced.

The critical discussion launched in reference to the wider meaning, objective and purpose of maqasid as-shari’ah under the epistemology of the Tawhidi methodological worldview results in the substantive understanding of maslaha, well-being. Maslaha as well-being forms the ultimate index of socio-scientific valuation under maqasid as-shari’ah in the light of the Tawhidi epistemological worldview. Thereby, the perspective of socioeconomic development, and more extensively socio-scientific intellection, is brought out as extensively participatory evolutionary process under the principle of unity of knowledge (Tawhidi episteme). Brief examples are invoked to establish this fact. An example of measured multidimensional well-being (maslaha) as the final index of participatory organic relations that maqasid as-shari’ah ought to project in reference to Tawhidi methodological worldview is represented.

This is a distinctively original paper in an area that has not been investigated thus far. Besides, much scope for further intellectual investigation is opened up.

This paper aims to open the gateway of methodological abstraction and its application in an Islamic perspective in a way that has not been carried out before in Islamic literature. That is because of the absence of ontological and epistemological inquiry in Islamic erudition for a long time now. In the case of the Shari’ah and its induction of socioeconomic studies, the span of intellection and application ought to be premised on the ontological, epistemological, phenomenological and continuity attributes derived from the monotheistic law. This takes the formalism of organic inter-causal unity of being and becoming between the complementary good choices of life. The ontological monotheistic law of unity of knowledge is referred to as Tawhid in the Qur’an. Empirical work is done in support of the argument presented in this paper.

This paper is a formal contribution in the direction of developing a model of well-being based on the methodology of unity of knowledge arising from the Tawhidi epistemic foundation. In this regard, a methodologically interrelated theoretical and empirically applied study is accomplished to test the argumentation and hypothesis of endogenous systemic embedding of inter-variable causality between Shari’ah and economic and financial issues.

In spite of the epistemic approach to explain the embedding model of interrelationship between Islamic law and details of the socioeconomic field, Islamic scholarship and practice in all fields have remained oblivious to its epistemic roots. Consequently, as presently understood, Shari’ah and economics and the various socio-scientific specifics, as of Islamic finance and financial and religious institutions in these areas, could not make a generalized model of social well-being, one that can be simulated by inter-variable causal relations.

The paper conveys a critical conceptual idea to debate the scope and approach of Islamic Law, Shari’ah, on economic matters. The system-oriented approach is used to formulate a systems theory of integration between Shari’ah and economics. The results of the approach implemented in this study constitute a major contribution of this paper to scholarship in general and acts as a critique of traditional Islamic thought with respect to Shari’ah and economics.