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To explore the outer reaches of buying, selling, property rights in an Islamic context.

Philosophical, applying legal analysis, critique to the work of Richard Epstein.

That there are no exceptions to the general rule that, under full free enterprise, anything must be allowed to be purchased, sold or given away.

To attain a system of laissez‐faire capitalism, the law should be changed so as to recognize voluntary slave contracts.

There would be very few or none in an advanced wealthy society. However, there might be some in the underdeveloped world.

It advances one's knowledge of the marketplace, law and contracts.

This chapter tries to find that how to reduce transaction cost in corporate governance by subjecting it institutionally to ethics and values of interactive and consensual decision making with transparency gained from participation between managers and shareholders/stakeholders and the community at large. This is an epistemological problem in Islamic approach to corporate governance. This chapter brings these out in technical language and methodology. An analytical epistemological and comparative study between mainstream and Islamic conceptions in corporate governance is used to develop the idea mentioned above. The analytical model used is of an ethico-economic general equilibrium type with learning variables. This chapter conveys an original idea that has not been taken up elsewhere. It reflects the systems approach to the study of behavior in corporate setting within the epistemology of systemic unity of knowledge.

The purpose of this paper is to address the following question: how do we derive a systemic understanding of community, business and microenterprise linkages in the light of the cardinal episteme of Islamic belief, Tawhid?

The worldview of unity of the divine laws termed in the Qur'an as Tawhid (oneness of God or equivalently oneness of the divine laws and also unity of knowledge) is explained in the form of a general socioeconomic paradigm. This worldview is then used to address the complementary relationships between microenterprises and their embedded social environment comprising community and business.

The participatory development interrelationships explained by means of circular causation between the variables representing community, business and microenterprise comprise a specific example of application of the Islamic episteme of unity of knowledge to entities that exist in embedded learning systems. Such learning systems are governed by the episteme of unity of knowledge as explicated by the Qur'an and the Sunnah (Prophetic guidance). These together form the foundation of every Islamic methodological inquiry and application. Examples of microenterprises are Pasar Pagi (morning markets) and Pasar Malam (night markets) in Indonesia. Other comparative examples are given.

This paper shows how participatory development and sustainability‐by learning paradigms arise uniquely from the epistemic foundations of unity of knowledge (Tawhid). The productive transformation of microenterprise groupings through their complementary relationships with community and business is shown to invoke the Tawhidi epistemic worldview. The result of such complementary social embedding is expected to result in enhanced organization and productivity of microenterprises. The paper offers policy prescriptions for such participatory development change.

The purpose of this paper is to explain how to reduce transaction cost in corporate governance by subjecting it institutionally to ethics and values of interactive and consensual decision making with transparency gained from participation between managers and shareholders/stakeholders and the community at large. This is an epistemological problem in the Islamic approach to corporate governance. The paper brings these out in technical language and methodology.

An analytical epistemological and comparative study between mainstream and Islamic conceptions in corporate governance is used to develop the idea mentioned above. The analytical model used is of an ethico‐economic general equilibrium type with learning variables.

The Islamic theory of corporate governance under the rubric of its epistemology of unity of knowledge treated within a systems approach is found to reduce transaction cost and produce better management decisions.

The paper is mostly theoretical in nature but carries quantitative facts on the limitations of existing corporate governance practice at the accountancy level in the global scene.

The adoption of institutional modes to generate interactive, integrative and evolutionary frameworks of corporate decision making is derived from the content of the paper. Recent global incidents with WorldCom and Enron are cited to show how corporate governance has failed as an effective means of reducing the immense transaction costs that were engendered by the failure of these mega corporations.

The paper conveys an original idea that has not been taken up elsewhere. It reflects the systems approach to the study of behavior in a corporate setting within the epistemology of systemic unity of knowledge. Besides, in the Islamic comparison that the paper undertakes in contradistinction to the mainstream approach, the methodology of systemic unity of knowledge conveys an altogether new way of studying corporate governance in the related new institutional framework.

The purpose of this paper is to set out the role of banking in a binary and Islamic economy.

By comparison, the paper shows that the main requirements for such an economy, although superficially similar, differ from the realities of “free market” finance capitalism. The paper goes on to explain how, in a binary and Islamic economy, commercial banks would be the means by which interest‐free loans, coming from the central bank and ummah and directed at various forms of productive capacity, would be introduced.

There is no difficulty in using the banking system to introduce the binary and Islamic economy. However, a paradigm issue is involved.

The central bank‐issued interest‐free loans implemented through the commercial banking system loans serve the ends of both binary and Islamic economics in that they enhance the real economy and forward social and economic justice.

The paper shows how use of these loans is a new concept with a power to change the whole of the economy and society in a beneficial way.

In a capitalist system, an annual report that includes financial statement is assumed to provide sound information concerning a given company. The annual report offers a background to a company, its financial position, operational results, and its performance. According to radical economics, a financial statement serves the interests of capitalists (Belkaoui, 1984). Annual reports are also value free and are not concerned with issues such as justice or ethics. Indeed, current trends in accounting have raised some questions concerning the paradigm of traditional accounting theory and especially its bias its bias concerning capitalist interests. The emergence of Employee Reporting, Value Added Accounting, Socio‐Economic Accounting, and Environmental Accounting, to name just a few, is evidences of the shortcomings of the capitalistic accounting system in establishing both just and fair principles among company stakeholders. This has therefore led to a demand for a new approach towards accounting disclosure including among others things: a clear account of how a company treats its employees, society, the environment, and the beliefs of employee’s. Even tough the standard formulated by AAOIFI (1998) based on capitalistic accounting, are still in a theoretical stage of development they can be used as a starting point that may help lead to an improved set of disclosure criteria that can be used by an Islamic bank or organization. This paper will discuss the empirical evidence derived from one such Islamic organization. Bank Muamalat Indonesia, has compiled information using capitalistic accounting standards so as to clarify its financial position and results of operations to stakeholders. It is hypothesized though, that the current disclosure system employed gives no indication of justness or fairness and so is incompatible with Islamic value. The paper argues Muslim researcher sold aim to move from utilizing capitalistic practice primarily concerned with the disclosure of financial indicators and towards a system that also consider justice, fairness, and ethical practices.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether any discrepancy exists between the corporate social activities disclosed in the annual reports of Islamic banks and the corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure index which has been developed based on the Islamic business ethics framework.

This paper reports on a survey of annual reports of seven Islamic banks using the method of content analysis to measure the volume of CSR disclosure.

The results show the overall mean CSR disclosure index of one Islamic bank out of seven to be above average and the issues of CSR are not of major concern for most Islamic banks.

CSR disclosure in the Islamic banks is experimental and could be explored in greater depth in future studies.

The findings have important implications for academics and researchers, as they pave the ways for further investigation. The results also have important implication for Accounting and Auditing Organisation for Islamic Financial Institutions in developing a CSR reporting standard if Islamic banks are to enhance their image and reputation globally, as well as to remain competitive.

The paper contributes to the growing debate on CSR in ethical perspective and key underlying issues associated with the emergence of new disclosure practices for Islamic financial institutions. Through this paper, new visibilities explored, and competing dilemmas opened up.

The purpose of this paper is to formalize a general equilibrium circular causation relationship model in the Islamic economic framework between wealth tax (Zakat), Islamic bank and the real economy.

Mathematical modeling along with explanation.

The integrative interrelationships can be formalized only under the assumption of unity of knowledge as derived from the foundation of oneness of the divine law (shari’ah) according to the Qur’an, Prophetic traditions (Sunnah) and social discourse.

A future work would be to empirically estimate the general equilibrium model.

A guidance to Islamic banks on the constructive utilization of Zakat fund for productive transformation in the real economy.

A general equilibrium model guided by the episteme of oneness of the divine law at work, hence unity of knowledge at work in real problems of ethics and economics according to the Islamic worldview.