JOURNAL OF ISLAMIC ECONOMIC STUDIES
Year:2011 | Volume:4 | Issue:2 (6) @L00362|Papers Count:6

After defining the concepts of Israf and the opportunity cost, this paper tries to shed light on the relation of these two concepts and to answer these questions: when the opportunity cost of Israf prevention is more than the Israf itself? what would be the optimal choice? What should a Muslim manager do. The answer to these questions can be: there is no trade-off between Israf and the opportunity cost. It means: because the idea of opportunity cost is a rational matter, it can be used as a tool to understand what Israf is and what it is not. So, it is possible to consider a threshold level for Israf above which it is forbidden for sure.

This paper tries to explain the history and causes of creation of pyramid companies and also to analyze these activities from the Fighi-economic point of view. The legitimacy of Income generation from such activities is examined in addition. Analyses presented in this study, using the analytic-descriptive methodology, show that the pyramidal firms are divided into two categories: healthy and unhealthy pyramid companies. Unhealthy pyramid is named “Pyramid Scheme”. The target of healthy pyramid companies, which have dedicated their work to marketing, is profitability which ultimately contributes to economic growth, while the Pyramid Scheme companies just move money and create opportunities to make profit from this movement. It seems that this type of economic activities create economic problems for the countries. In addition, it seems that it would be possible to evaluate the pyramid activities from the Fighi point of view and shows that they are in controversy with different Fighi rules. For example: the ambiguity of the nature and name of the contract, the availability of fraud and the damage presence. In addition, it seems that the general topic “gaining from invalid activities” includes such activities. So, it is not accepted to make money out of such activities from the Islamic perspective.

Because of its complexity and broadness, the concept of justice has always been one of the challenging topics in view of scholars over different historical eras. Each of them has tried hard to explain this concept using different views. The result of such efforts is a bunch of diverging and varied theories. Using the model of “principles, concepts, prerequisites and indices” in the justice arena, this paper tries to shed light on the concept of justice (to understand its principles and bases) using the Islamic perspective and based on new classification of available theories. This action not only provides a roadmap to follow but also smoothens the way to theorize justice. So, the main question of the research would be: how one can define the theoretical nature of the justice? In this regards, the qualitative approach has been used as the research methodology and the content analysis has been used to gather and analyze data. Choosing a good instrument to classify the theories helps us to understand their similarities and dissimilarities. To do so, after focusing on different available classifications, some of them, which are more important, are chosen. The research tries to analyze these theories and based upon this it tries to provide a new classification grounded on three dimensions; which are related to philosophy, humanity and value. This new classification not only lacks the shortcomings of others but also is based on the Islamic principles. In addition and as a case study, the justice theory of Ralws is analyzed considering the philosophical classification. This effort would be a beginning for expanding the philosophical and religious views in categorizing the justice literature.

The importance of the tax and the tax income is known to everybody in Iran. The availability of different economic views and the ambiguity of the suitable tax rate make the idea of finding the best tax model a very important topic. The Muslims’ belief that Islam is a complete religion and the existence of economic matters in the initial Islamic era, has given the Islamic economic rules a very important role. This paper tries to provide a plan for exercising a suitable tax model using Islamic tax rules. In this regards, the paper makes use of the Zakat and Khoms rules which are broader than others things nowadays. The rules extracted from Zakat and Khoms and their comparison with the current tax systems show that the value added tax system is the best model. In this model, the tax rates are gotten from the Zakat and Khoms rates. The results show that the execution of a tax system in Iran is only possible when it is to be put in action by people’s cooperation. Hence, paying attention to the religious dimensions of the tax can help the tax system to be successful.

The Islamic government has a wide responsibilities and rights. These are more than the responsibilities and rights of any other socialist, liberal or even social-democrat government. So because it has these wide rights, it should be more accountable in comparison with other systems and it has a more vital role in economic development. In this paper, the rights and responsibilities of the Islamic government is compared with that of other kinds of governments and the role it can have in economic, cultural, social and political development would be emphasized. The Islamic government cannot consider the market as a remedy to solve the all problems. It is responsible about all the economic and social matters of the society and should be accountable to them. The role of the government in the economic development would be the determination of the goals, planning for development, financing the economic projects, regulating the market and smoothing the way for the private sector to be able to do optional and profitable activities in line with the development plan. The Islamic government cannot be ignorant about the problems of the private sector in the area of production, distribution and marketing. This research tries to shed light on the role of the Islamic government in the process of creation, enforcement and supervision over the economic development plans and finally provides some suggestions for the improvement of the role of the government in development.

Considering the importance of the Zakat in Islam and emphasis on Zakat payment in Quran and divine tradition, in this paper the most important factors affecting the people partnership in Zakat payment are analyzed. In the first stage, the most important factors are gathered using Delphi approach in four rounds. These are: humanism, the religiosity, self-satisfaction, welfare and organization. Then, these factors and their indices have been tested in the Hamedan province between the Zakat payers. In this stage, the effectiveness of each factor has been tested using TTEST. Humanism, the religiosity and organization factors are those that have been considered effective and the self-satisfaction and welfare have not been considered as effective ones. After that, the intensity of the factors with each other has been tested using the Pierson correlation coefficient. Finally, using the Fridman test, the importance of any of the factors has been analyzed.