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Sayyid Abu'l A 'la Maududi on Islamic Economics: A Review Article
In the course of a distinguished career as a writer, scholar, public intellectual, and politician, Mauln Sayyid Abl A'l Maudd (1903-1979) also spoke and wrote on economic issues, and had a profound impact on economic thought in Pakistan, and the Muslim world. Fortunately, a selection of his speeches and writings, dating mainly from the early years of Pakistan to a few years before the secession of East Pakistan (Bangladesh) were compiled as a book in Urdu in 1969 by his close associate, Professor Khurshid Ahmad (b. 1932). This article reviews* an English translation of this work, First Principles of Islamic Economics that has appeared recently.1
After a brief Introduction the selections in this work are arranged in two parts: Islam's philosophy (or system, the words are used interchangeably) of economic life, and the application of this philosophy to some specific economic issues. The contents of the book are presented in a Table (overleaf), showing chapter titles, sources, and their original dates. Before reviewing the text, however, it is necessary to comment - unfortunately, at some length, given the semantic minefield that readers of texts on Islamic economics must traverse - on a few issues relating to the Urdu original, and its translation.
Translation is an impossible task, in which a Solomonic choice has to be made between being true to the author and being comprehensible to the reader. The translator, Ahmad Imam Shafaq Hashemi has done a marvellous job in which he has privileged the reader - and modernised the text (e.g. by transforming ma'?sh? from economic, to well-being, in the title of Part One) - without departing too far from the author. Even so, there is a deep rooted ambiguity in the original that is transmitted in translation, which may trouble the uninitiated reader. This ambiguity relates largely to the sense and referents of two critical words, translated as economic and system, and to the concept of an Islamic system (or order).
Words: Economic, and System
The nouns economy and economics, and the adjective, economic, that can refer to either, translate the ambiguous Urdu words, ma'shat, ma'shiyt, and ma'?sh?.2 Maul?n? used ma'?shat (economy) and ma'?sh? (economic) not in the sense of the...