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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.

To address the much heated debate now raging in the international scene, namely between Islam and the West as two great civilization forces of mankind.

The objective is achieved by studying it in the light of rigorous analysis involving the world‐systems of the two paradigms and by subjecting the analysis to mathematical investigation as necessary.

Some specific issues, such as epistemology and the associated phenomenological model, its application for economy, markets, money and globalization are investigated to establish the arguments of the paper.

If research is reported on in the paper this section must be completed and should include suggestions for future research and any identified limitations in the research process.

Some practical implications arising from the theoretical basis of the paper are shown in the areas of money and real economy, globalization and the economy.

Such a contrasting scientific argumentation between Islam and neoliberalism as the contrasting paradigms has not been undertaken in any paper that I know of. Thus, this is an original paper in argumentation rather than polemics.

The purpose of this study/paper is the generalized ontological law of monotheism (unity of knowledge) and its functioning in the financial world system is summarized and contrasted with the recent conception of “shari’ah-compliance”. Thereby, some specific rulings of shari’ah-compliance in Islamic finance are critically annulled. The principal problem of the inability of shari’ah-compliance in the formalism of rate-setting and debt cancellation is pointed out in analytical ways. The alternative valuation models in the light of the Tawhidi ontological law are formalized. Many important issues are examined in analytical and Tawhidi authentic ways of Islamic law contra to shari’ah-compliance.

The epistemological approach commencing from the Tawhidi ontological law is used as the premise of developing analytical formalism to counter the irrelevant rulings done by the field of shari’ah compliance. Thereby, endogenous moral and ethical foundations are studied in deriving analytical finance models of asset valuation, rate-determination and debt cancellation.

Substantive analytical results are derived for intellection in the area of the primal ontological law of Tawhid that negates many of the rulings framed up in shari’ah-compliance area of Islamic law. These results can guide financial academia, practitioners and policymakers.

The paper can be expanded subsequently to the area of analytical Islamic finance in general by further investigating the Modigliani and Miller theorem on optimal debt-equity structure of corporate finance. An introduction to this study is provided in this paper as a starting point of dealing with the debt problem of shari’ah-compliance.

The paper presents important guidance as input for the rulings of shari’ah-compliance idea held by shari’ah advisory boards and similar institutions presently operating at the financial level.

The paper presents a subtle transformation of the social and financial order in the light of the Tawhidi ontological law quite differently from the way that shari’ah-compliance envisions.

The theoretical and projected applied perspectives in analytical finance presented in this paper provide a methodological worldview for all areas of social finance with ethical consciousness. Such analytical approach is much needed today in the reconstruction of global finance in the scale of ethics and away from the sole focus on capital market efficiency.

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.

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)

The purpose of this paper is to address the following question: how do we derive a systemic understanding of community, business and microenterprise linkages in the light of the cardinal episteme of Islamic belief, Tawhid?

The worldview of unity of the divine laws termed in the Qur'an as Tawhid (oneness of God or equivalently oneness of the divine laws and also unity of knowledge) is explained in the form of a general socioeconomic paradigm. This worldview is then used to address the complementary relationships between microenterprises and their embedded social environment comprising community and business.

The participatory development interrelationships explained by means of circular causation between the variables representing community, business and microenterprise comprise a specific example of application of the Islamic episteme of unity of knowledge to entities that exist in embedded learning systems. Such learning systems are governed by the episteme of unity of knowledge as explicated by the Qur'an and the Sunnah (Prophetic guidance). These together form the foundation of every Islamic methodological inquiry and application. Examples of microenterprises are Pasar Pagi (morning markets) and Pasar Malam (night markets) in Indonesia. Other comparative examples are given.

This paper shows how participatory development and sustainability‐by learning paradigms arise uniquely from the epistemic foundations of unity of knowledge (Tawhid). The productive transformation of microenterprise groupings through their complementary relationships with community and business is shown to invoke the Tawhidi epistemic worldview. The result of such complementary social embedding is expected to result in enhanced organization and productivity of microenterprises. The paper offers policy prescriptions for such participatory development change.

To apply the Tawhidi epistemology in the automobile industry as the paradigm of the Islamic socio‐scientific order in terms of its inherent knowledge‐centered worldview.

The concepts of unity and unification of knowledge in a system‐wide sense are analytically developed in the framework of shuratic process or equivalently as the interactive, integrative and evolutionary process‐oriented methodology (IIE).

The analytical conceptualization is derived in the light of Qur'anic rules (ahkam) and recommended that policies, programs and instruments would jointly promote the development of mutual profitability and address the social milieu as well.

Tawhidi unification methodology of extensive participation and linkage can be applied widely.

Certain policy recommendations in the light of the shari'ah precepts of this case study can be made.

It is consensus among Muslim social scientists that religion as an informal institution plays a very important role in building the socio-economic structure of an Islamic state. The transmission of religiosity across generations has important economic implications for a family in particular and a society in general. The Tawhidi methodology is applied for a theoretical model and for the development of the model. The purpose of this study is to determine the transmission of religious capital in an Islamic society.

This study by using an index of religiosity for both parents and their offspring has explored the causal relationship between the religiosity across generations. By using three-tier analytical strategies, i.e. zero-order regression, model with control variables and model with mediating variables, this study has regressed two models for each control and mediating variable.

The findings for the core variable in all models confirmed the hypothesis of the study that parental religious traits are important determinants of the religiosity of their offspring. For the model of control variables, the variables of area, gender and age of the respondent along with the parental religious index are found to be significant with appropriate signs. For the model with mediating variables, only the variable of parental sharing of religious values along with the parental religious index are found to impact the religiosity of the offspring. Therefore, the nutshell of the findings is that the religious orientation of an offspring is highly influenced by the religious denominations of the parents. The formation of the religious capital is a continuous process and the ultimate result of divine knowledge.

Data at the national level are not collected for this purpose by governmental organizations in a country like Pakistan because of shortage of funds. Therefore, data are collected by the authors.

This study will provide guidance to policy-makers for the formulation of their policies.

Intergenerational transmission of religious capital plays a very important role in the moral development of an ideal society.

This is an original effort and is conducted for the first time in Pakistan.

The purpose of this paper is to bring out with analytical argumentation and mathematical treatment the central problem of Islamic economics, finance, institutionalism and socio‐scientific thought as it is being practiced today and for some time now. The problem arises from the failure of contemporary Islamic intellection to formulate its methodology according to the cardinal principle, and the singularly central and minimal axiom of all its inferences. This is the precept of the oneness of God explained in terms of the epistemology of unity of divine knowledge and the unity of the consequential knowledge‐induced world‐system.

The objective is achieved by mathematical theorems for pointing out the impossibility problem of Islamic economics and finance. The analytical alternative in the epistemological framework of unity of knowledge, or the functional law of oneness of God in its functional ontological functioning in economics and finance are formalized.

A number of Impossibility Theorems of Islamic economics and finance are stated and solved. Alternative epistemological premise and its functional nature are presented in the light of unity of knowledge or what is known as the law of oneness of God and its application to the unified world‐system.

This is a theoretical paper based on analytical argumentation and mathematical formalism to bring out the theorems that state and resolve the problem of impossibility of attaining the goals of Islamic economics and finance under their present pursuit.

Although the paper is of a theoretical nature it has profound practical extensions. The principal ones are in the direction of developing the structure of Islamic economy and financing within a globally interactive, integrative and evolutionary system of practical interrelations. Such a structuring will embed the economy, finance, business and society in an organic model of unity of interrelations.

The paper presents a new social and ethical meaning to the present exogenous treatment of Islamic economics that proceeds on by an exogenous treatment of morality, ethics and their functioning in an unsustainable economic, finance, and social order.

This paper is emphatically original. It questions the entire premise and methodological orientation of the prevailing nature of Islamic economics and finance. The intellection and its application based on the absence of unity of knowledge as the divine mooring of Islamic intellection in everything has been distanced or treated as an exogenous still‐born axiom having no dynamics in the analytical and functional system otherwise.

The section in the main paper entitled, “What is the Idea of the Worldview of Epistemic Oneness versus the Contrasting Socio-Scientific Paradigm?” elaborate on the nature of the worldview. A comparative study of the theme is included.