Islam and Markets

The field of Islamic Economics has traditionally focused on two main areas of inquiry, banking and the public sector. The objective of this paper is an attempt to fill an important gap in the Islamic Economics literature that has been surprisingly overlooked by most scholars in the field. This gap concerns the nature and role of markets in an Islamic economic system. The primary concern is to investigate the nature and structure of an Islamic formulation of markets. The paper engages in a detailed analysis of Islamic scripture, the Qur'an and Hadith, pertaining to the issues of contracts, exchange, markets, prices, regulation, usury, and competition. The paper identifies an active and comprehensive treatment of markets in Islamic scripture that questions many of the misconceptions surrounding the relationship between Islam and markets.