Vice Chancellor, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE) delivered his seminal discourse on “Building a Genuinely Islamic Economics” at International Institute of Islamic Economics (IIIE) of International Islamic University, Islamabad (IIUI).
The lecture was part of a series of launched by institute titled Distinguished Economists’ Lecture Series (DELS).
In the lecture, Dr. Asad presented an insightful critique of the conventional capitalist economics in light of its sole focus on the macroeconomic goal of economic growth for wealth maximization. Against the background of the continuous failure of the capitalist economics in ensuring just and equitable distribution of national wealth among all sections of the society for alleviating the extreme poverty of masses, he highlighted the imperative of establishing a genuinely Islamic economics which inherently asserts that the economic resources are held by humans as Amanah and these resources are Islamically required to be shared with other deserving humans for the fulfillment of their genuine basic needs due to the unique Islamic emphasis on distribution and redistribution of income as well as wealth.
In this context, he pointed to the imperative of reviving the original Islamic institutions (for example, Zakat/Sadaqaat, Waqf, family, neighborhood, Islamic law of inheritance, family, mosque, and the Islamic system of justice). The lecture was followed by a question-answer session.