It is the time to depart from the mirror game in the rhetoric of economics

Abstract EN

-The discourse on the economic system of Islam was constructed from the late 1940s onwards as a mirror game in relation to the capitalist and socialist systems.

In recent decades, the discourse has positioned itself in relation to the neoclassical model under the reign of the market system in a context where all aspects of human life are subordinated to the power of finance.

Despite the change of referent, this discourse remains trapped in the ‘mirror game’, i.e., the fact of constructing an argument by appealing to fictitious facts or truncated realities.

This article draws attention to the need to free oneself from this mirror game which puts the discourse on Islamic economics in a vicious circle.

Yet, the Muslim heritage of knowledge abounds in priceless conceptual treasures.

This is evidenced by the notion of ‘Ma’āsh’ as developed by al-Khalīl al-Farāhīdī (718-786), which refers to a double meaning: ‘what allows to live with’ and ‘what allows to live inside’.

Such an approach encompasses the material aspects of life and the interactions between humans and their living environments.

It has the merit of opening a new field of meditation worthy of interest in comparison with the writings of Ibn Khaldun and Polanyi.