Introduction

Dr. Abbas Shafieinejad, born in 1976, holds both a Level 4 seminary degree in economics and a university Ph.D. in money and banking. As a member of the board of the Islamic Economics Association of the Qom Seminary and the head of the Economic Jurisprudence Department at the Center for Jurisprudence of the Pure Imams, he addresses the nature and requirements of economic jurisprudence in this exclusive note.

Economic Jurisprudence: Definition and Background

In technical terms, fiqh refers to understanding the obligations and prohibitions related to the actions of individuals in a general sense, while economics is the study of human and economic entities’ behaviors in economic activities. Jurisprudence dictates what should be done in various aspects of life, including economic matters, whereas economics describes how individuals (extended to economic entities and society) act in economic contexts. Thus, economic jurisprudence is tasked with determining how individuals, groups, companies, economic entities, and governments should act, as well as defining the nature of economic relationships—between an individual and themselves, an individual and others, an individual and the government, the government and the people, and the government with other governments—based on specific principles and criteria.

Islamic jurisprudence, particularly Shiite jurisprudence, has historically addressed rulings related to transactions, with the jurisprudence of transactions consistently being a primary branch of jurisprudence across various categorizations. Prominent Shiite jurists, from early to contemporary scholars, have extensively discussed transaction rulings in their works.

Following the Industrial Revolution and the development of economic relations and financial markets, economic issues became more complex, leading to diverse approaches to analyzing economic behaviors and the origins of economic crises. This complexity gave rise to new needs in the field of transactions, including emerging transactions, monetary and financial markets, insurance, and macroeconomic issues, all requiring responses from jurisprudence.

Martyr Sadr’s book Iqtisaduna (Our Economics) was compiled to address these needs, articulating the Islamic jurisprudential perspective on the origins of income and ownership, means of transferring ownership, distribution before and after production, income redistribution, and more. In this book, Martyr Sadr effectively delineates the distinctions between the Islamic economic school and capitalist and socialist economic systems.

Islamic economics scholars further explored economic jurisprudence, resulting in works such as Jurisprudential Foundations of Islamic Economics (Karami and Pourmand), Jurisprudence of the Islamic Economic System (Mohsen Araki), Economic Jurisprudence (Islamic Financial Resources) (Hamed Rostami Najafabadi), and Economic Jurisprudence (Mahmoud Eisavi). Additionally, numerous books and articles have addressed specific aspects of economic jurisprudence, such as banking and financial markets, in a specialized manner.

However, the rapid growth of economic relations and the emergence of new issues across various economic sectors have created new demands for economic jurisprudence, expecting it to provide problem-solving responses. Moreover, new doubts about the capability of jurisprudence to govern society have heightened the expectations of the academic community, particularly regarding economic jurisprudence.

As a defined framework for addressing economic issues and needs through jurisprudence, economic jurisprudence requires dynamism and updating to: (1) clarify the obligations of economic actors—individuals, companies, entities, and governments—so they can align their goals and performance with jurisprudential rulings; and (2) enable economic jurisprudence to guide the country’s macroeconomic path in the Islamic Republic by offering strategies and models derived from jurisprudence for decision-making, legislation, and policy-making.

Challenges and Obstacles in Economic Jurisprudence

A. Content-Related Challenges

• Low production of economic jurisprudence content compared to the overall content produced in economic sciences.

• Ambiguity in the methodology of economic jurisprudence and conflicts between rule-based and objective-based approaches among proponents of economic jurisprudential governance.

• Lack of emphasis on social jurisprudence and macroeconomic contexts in economic jurisprudence outputs.

• Weakness in updating economic jurisprudence content to match the conditions and complexities of economic issues.

• Need for updating and producing more works on the jurisprudential principles and rules of economic jurisprudence.

• Lack of alignment among some economic jurisprudence works (e.g., literature produced in banking jurisprudence is not aligned with that of capital markets or tax systems).

• Lack of coherence between economic jurisprudence content and other jurisprudential subsystems (e.g., a disconnect exists between social jurisprudence, political jurisprudence, economic jurisprudence, and their collective alignment with governmental jurisprudence).

B. Institutional Challenges

• Economic jurisprudence requires a robust, authoritative seminary institution capable of influencing legislative and policy-making processes in economic sectors such as the Central Bank, Ministry of Economy, Industry and Mining, Natural Resources, and more. However, no such powerful institution currently exists in the field of economic jurisprudence in the country.

• Lack of coordination among institutions, councils, associations, and centers related to economic jurisprudence, leading to redundant efforts.

• A key institutional requirement for economic jurisprudence, particularly for comparative and data-driven studies, is establishing defined connections with other research and statistical centers in the country, which has not yet been realized.

• A specialized scientific-research journal on economic jurisprudence could serve as a platform for collecting or producing valuable research in this field.

• Lack of connection between economic jurisprudence institutions and graduate-level academic institutions. Economic jurisprudence has significant potential to shape educational curricula, thesis topics, workshops, and scientific seminars in universities, but this potential remains underutilized due to the aforementioned issue.

C. Human Resource Challenges

• The field of economic jurisprudence faces a shortage of specialized human resources.

• The number of specialists in economic jurisprudence available to supervise and guide theses is limited.

• Advanced dars-e kharij (jurisprudential seminars) specializing in economic jurisprudence are insufficient to meet existing needs.

• Universities lack sufficient professors interested in training and guiding students in economic jurisprudence.

Requirements of Economic Jurisprudence

A. Content-Related Requirements

• It is essential to produce scientific content for economic jurisprudence at various seminary and university levels.

• Existing content requires review and updating to align with current needs.

• Developing an optimal methodology for economic jurisprudence can address methodological shortcomings. Directing seminary and university theses toward examining the methodology of economic jurisprudence is one solution.

• Ensuring coordination among the various components of economic jurisprudence and their alignment with other jurisprudential subsystems is a key requirement for its development.

B. Institutional Requirements

• Without an institutional and administrative structure tailored to economic jurisprudence, success in this field is unlikely.

• The Islamic Economics Association must be officially recognized and supported to organize existing economic jurisprudence institutions.

• The Islamic Economics Association should establish necessary and effective connections with legislative and policy-making institutions, with its role formally recognized in these bodies.

• Collaboration with universities to guide research, theses, and academic curricula toward economic jurisprudence.

C. Human Resource Requirements

• The seminary must take necessary steps to train human resources and mandate its affiliated institutions to establish specialized programs in economic jurisprudence to develop specialized personnel.

• Establishing a research institute focused on economic jurisprudence and recruiting faculty for this purpose would undoubtedly motivate students and scholars to direct their studies toward this field.

• Leveraging the existing pool of specialized human resources in economic jurisprudence, including scholars and professors trained in the field, is a critical requirement for training new personnel.