فصلنامه اقتصاد اسلامی
پیاپی 11 (پاییز 1382)

The paper attempts to expound the consumption as any activity that leads to get a utility- weather it requires money or time to pay for or not. To this end the author characterizes first a Muslim consumer’s behavioural framework and then his/her utility function and its variation and slope after the influence of religious faith as a safety valve. The paper explains the Muslim consumer’s equilibrium conditions with the incorporation of his beliefs effects in the model.

The function and development of derivative instruments in financial market has resulted in discussions about their validity and permissibility in Islamic jurisprudence. The future contracts are related to the validity of certain contracts such as dayn ba dayn and kali ba kali transactions. Future contracts are of different forms. By rejecting some of objections on dayn ba dayn contracts, one can infer the validity of some forms of future contracts. But one should differentiate between primary and secondary markets. One should not regard option contract as the same with qawlnameh or insurance or baya-ul-arbun; though it has the capability to be legally rectified.

The past two decades after approval and implementation of The Interest Free Banking act provides a proper opportunity to examine and review its merits and flaws. A deep consideration shows that there are certain vacuums and flaws in the theoretical and practical dimensions of Iran’s non-interest banking. Effective steps could be taken with regard to restructuring the banking system by reforming and improving the aforesaid law. A fundamental question which has resulted in numerous theoretical and practical difficulties in banking area is an approach to replace the conventional interest based banking system by a complete non interest banking system. What was not taken into consideration in these process was the prohibition of interest based loan in Islam by which many real transactions such as salaf, tanzil, ijara, joalah, sherkat, mozarebah, mozareah, mosaqat and solh were approved; though they are quite different from each other in nature and do not fall in one financial category. It’s obvious that collecting various contracts with different rules and regulations under a single financial organization such as bank will lead to a sophisticated and ambiguous operation and an increase in the costs of control and supervision and inefficiency in the banking system. To solve this problem the paper suggests four types of banking namely as “Qard-uul-hasana (beneficence loan) banking”, “transactional banks with fixed profits”, “participatory banks with variable profits” and “comprehensive (all purpose) banks”. The characteristic of these banks with regard to their legitimacy, and low cost of operation and a higher applicability is expounded in this paper.

The place and permissibility of the modern non-specific contracts, which were uncommon during the holy Prophet’s era -in particular those new contracts and legal set ups resulting from industrial and technological developments and services influenced by the complex economic relations- are subject to controversies among jurists. Most of classical jurists consider them illegal, but the majority of contemporary jurists have proved their compatibility with Shiite juridical criteria by resorting to general and common principles available in juridical argumentations. The paper deals with raising different viewpoints in this regard by applying the general and common arguments provided in fiqh specially the Quranic verse obligating people to be faithful to their promises. The rules and regulations relating to designing these contracts are discussed.

Corruption exists, somehow, in all countries of the world with different dimensions. Our country is also suffering from this phenomenon. Since many years the corruption and its elimination has been a concern for our country. Financial corruption is a complex and multidimensional phenomenon resulting from different cultural, political, and economic causes and requiring their specific solutions. The paper examines the different aspects and the causes of prevalence of corruption in the country and suggests a value oriented and religious approach to combat it. Since Islam considers both internal and external factors the economic solutions derived from divine values and religious framework are more reliable. To sum up, this paper introduces corruption, points out the economic causes and the destructive consequences of its spread and suggests specific practical frameworks and solutions to alleviate or eliminate it.