Economic Cosmology: Ethics, Sustainability, and the Nonhuman in the Muslim World (EcoCos)

This interdisciplinary project is devised as a critical and comparative study of contemporary (21st century) and classical (8th-16th century) epistemological, philosophical, and practical aspects of economic thought and the nonhuman across the Muslim world, especially in the MENA and in South(east) Asia regions. It investigates ethical approaches to economics, sustainability, and the nonhuman environment – as a space that is more complex than just an invariable proxy for the human. Rather than embracing the fields of economic science and environmental studies in the context of neoliberal capitalism, this project examines various empirical, religious, philosophical, and historical manifestations of economic and environmental thought as they were conceptualized across the Muslim world. Pre-modern approaches to economic teachings and the nonhuman environment have called into question colonial and postcolonial imaginative circuits and political formations, creating new forms of ethical engagement and analysis. By considering the polyvalent nature of ethical-economic genre in Islamic traditions, EcoCos continues this inquiry with a sustained focus on how economics and environment have been rendered in various Islamic texts, schools of thought, movements, and institutions. It analyzes diverse contemporary and historical accounts on the role of wealth and money (māl), financial mechanisms and instruments (e.g. ribā, zakāt, ḥisba), religious endowment (waqf), the notion of balance and conservation (mizān), as well as human relation toward nature and natural resources. Simultaneously, it analyzes the development of modern Islamic economics and “green initiatives” in MENA, questioning their ideological dependence on global economy and methodological frameworks in relation to the very concepts of “progress” and “sustainability”. 

Objectives

By cross-pollinating methodological and theoretical approaches within the fields of Islamic studies, environmental humanities, ethics, and intellectual history, the project aims to provide a more nuanced, critical, and varied perspectives within Islamic intellectual history on economic and environmental thought through non-Western sources and channels of influences.

Publications

Sami Al-Daghistani. “On Creation, Nature, and the Ethical Self: A Comparative Analysis of Ikhwān al-Ṣafā, al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, and Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī.” Journal of Islamic Ethics, Brill (February, 2025): 1-23.
https://brill.com/view/journals/jie/aop/article-10.1163-24685542-20250001/article-10.1163-24685542-20250001.xml  

Sami Al-Daghistani (ed.). Recovering Environmental and Economic Traditions in the Islamic World. Leiden: Brill’s Themes in Islamic Studies Series, Volume 9, Fall 2024.
https://brill.com/display/title/68600

Sami Al-Daghistani. “On Tazkiya and Zakāt al-Nafs: Decolonizing Modern Economic and Environmental Thought.” In Recovering Environmental and Economic Traditions in the Islamic World Recovering Environmental and Economic Traditions in the Islamic World, edited by Sami Al-Daghistani. Leiden: Brill’s Themes in Islamic Studies, Volume 9, Fall 2024.

Sami Al-Daghistani. “Introduction to Recovering Environmental and Economic Traditions in Islamic World.” In Recovering Environmental and Economic Traditions in the Islamic World, edited by Sami Al-Daghistani. Leiden: Brill’s Themes in Islamic Studies, Fall 2024.