Islam and Human Development

The paper aims to present the Islamic appraisal of established theories in academic literature of development economics, both in classical and neo-classical economics. The paper also explains the Islamic concept of human development and shows it to be more welfare maximizing to humans in their entire life span which includes afterlife. The paper extensively reviews the development literature in mainstream economics and Islamic economics. The paper also uses basic mathematical formulation to explain the concepts. The paper explains the Islamic concept of human development and shows it to be more welfare maximizing to humans and to society. It discusses how Islam is not the source of underdevelopment in Muslim countries and cites the external factors responsible for underdevelopment besides weak internal administration, commitment and management. The paper is one of the few attempts to cite and critically appraise specific development theories from Islamic perspective.