Introduction — I wrote this essay a while ago, and I am adding this preface here to explain more about WHY I wrote it: Preface: A central problem of our age is the turning of “means” into “ends”. It is obvious that money, by itself, is not a source of pleasure – it is a… Read More The Secrets of Happiness
Whereas conventional economics takes the nature of man as fixed and exogenous, Islamic teachings consider humans to simultaneously possess the potential for being better than angels and also for being worse than animals. Given this dual nature of man, the focus of Islamic teachings is to invite towards the good, and to discourage and prevent… Read More Islamic Economics: Transforming Humans
This continues a sequence of posts explaining how conventional economics is actually the economic theory of the top 1%: ET1%: Blindfolds created by Economic Theories. Eight central concepts of economic theory are shown to be deceptive – they have an appearance of objectivity, fairness, and equity, but actually conceal a strong bias in the favor of… Read More The Pareto Efficiency Swindle
Major revolutions can be created by everyone doing the little bit that they can. This was the driving idea behind the article below, written for the Pakistani context. It was published in the Express Tribune on March 16th, 2017 The right nutrition between pregnancy and the second birthday has a dramatic effect on a child’s… Read More A Campaign for the First Thousand Days
1000 word summary of Quaid-e-Azam Lecture at PSDE 33rd AGM held on 14th Dec, 2017 at Islamabad. Published in Express Tribune & the Nation 13th Jan 2018. 43m Video Lecture on YouTube: The main thesis of our lecture is that our quest for prosperity has failed to deliver the sought-after goals because we have misunderstood the meaning of prosperity , and looked… Read More Prosperity as Human Development, not Wealth
shortlink for this post: bit.do/azgtr Polanyi offers a deep historical study of how European societies based on traditional values of cooperation and social responsibility were tansformed into modern secular societies. In Polanyi’s terminology, social relations became embedded within the market, creating a market society driven by the imperative of commercialization, which makes money the measure… Read More Resources for Study of Polanyi’s Great Transformation
Because of Western dominance, brilliant thinkers from the East get very little attention in global media. Even though brilliant economists from East Asia and China have created globally acknowledged economic miracles in their countries, none of them have received a Nobel Prize. On the other hand, Western economists whose theories were demonstrably in conflict with… Read More The Human Development Revolution
{bit.ly/AZSpirit} Friday, 26th Jan 2017: Lecture by Dr. Asad Zaman, VC PIDE to students at University of Cambridge, Center of Development Studies for Religion & Development paper. 40 minute video recording of lecture on you-tube. For related posts, see: An Islamic Approach to Humanities. Part 1: “What Is Spirituality?”: Modern Secular thought takes spirituality and religion to… Read More Spirituality & Development
Max Weber wrote that “The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization, and, above all, by the ‘disenchantment of the world.’ Precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated from public life …” The disenchantment of world leads to the modern view of the heart as merely a pump for circulation… Read More Re-Enchanting the World
The answer to this apparently simple question is surprisingly complex. This article can only provide a brief sketch. Early in the 20th century, about 90 per cent of Muslim lands were colonised. The two world wars substantially weakened the European powers, and enabled liberation movements to succeed all over the globe. At the time, there… Read More What is Islamic Economics?
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