1.What is Islamic Gift Economy(IGE)?
Answer : The provisioning and sharing, by mutual giving and receiving, of natural and cultural abundance for realizing material and spiritual well-being.
2.Why is the definition like this?
Answer : This definition takes into consideration that the world and humankind are not only material or physical but more fundamentally they are also spiritual and have a higher, spiritual or metaphysical significance.
3.Why the notion Gift?
Answer : Its more about serving wider, communal/public rather than narrow, individual/private interests.
4.In IGE, how natural and cultural resources of the world is seen?
Answer : It is seen as blessings and bounties (fadl) from the Merciful Creator (ni‘am/ala’ al-Khaliq) are abundant and even unlimited in principle because wa in ta‘uddu ni‘mataLlahi la tuhsuha: “if you count the bounty of Allah you will not exhaust it” (Ibrahim: 34).
5.How will human act in IGE?
Answer : Humankind will take according to his need but not his greed, for because of abundance and plenitude there is no anxiety over scarcity that feeds greed (tama‘) and accumulation (takathur/jam‘ al-mal wa ta‘diduhu).
6.How does gratitude(shukr) plays role in IGE?
Answer : Gratitude(shukr) itself becomes an existential and psychological state of being that is itself generative of abundance (ziyadah) both material and spiritual, for "La in shakartum la’azidannakum" = “verily, if you give thanks, I will indeed give you more” (Ibrahim: 7).
7.How islamic economics is seen in IGE?
Answer : Islamic economics is seen as an economics of abundance,and never an economics of scarcity.
8.In IGE, how man manage his material desire?
Answer : Man voluntarily limits his material desires through cultivating the self-discipline of zuhd (spiritual detachment and economic downshifting) in order that he might better realize his higher and truer spiritual aspirations by which he finds his true self and place in the larger order of creation and being.
9.What is the verses in the Quran that serves as a good reminder regarding answer in question 8?
Answer : “bal tu’thiruna al-hayata al-dunya wa al-akhiratu khayrun wa abqa” = “Indeed, you prefer the life of the world, but the Afterlife is better and more lasting” (al-A‘la: 16-17).
10.What does the IGE serve in the context of cognitive and moral purpose?
Answer : They serve a cognitive and moral purpose that transcends their immediate physicality or sensuality; namely, a purpose which is indicative of a higher, more encompassing Reality (al-Haqq) on which they depend, in which they are embedded, and to which they respond.
