Construction of Islamic Human Development Index

The existing HDI concept is value neutral and unable to capture the religious and ethical perspective of socio-economic development in Muslim countries. It is argued that Muslim countries have some special features, cultures, and values that are not completely accommodated by the HDI measurement. Therefore, the current study is an attempt to propose an Islamic Human Development Index (I-HDI) as a holistic and comprehensive index for human development derived from the five dimensions of maqāṣid al-Sharīʿah: religion (dīn), life (nafs), intellect (ʿaql), family (nasl) and wealth (māl). Computation of an I-HDI is parallel with the HDI method. The constructed index is utilized to rank the human development level for 33 provinces in Indonesia. The study finds that the composition rank between I-HDI and HDI is slightly different. However, the two indices have a statistical positive correlation confirming the assumption that I-HDI might serve as a predictor for the rank of HDI. The findings also show that the majority of the provinces in Indonesia have a poor performance in overall score of I-HDI