The Islamic Mode of Regulation: A Speculation

Theories from the Regulation School of economics help us to explore some of the key features of contemporary Islamic economic thought. Just as Islamic economics has been neglected by scholars of religion who are not working within the often reified disciplines of economics, banking and finance or Islamic jurisprudence, the Regulation School of economic thought has been neglected by scholars of religion whose engagement with contemporary economic theory has generally not gone beyond the (mis)application of neo-classical concepts in rational action theories of religion (Bruce 1999). This article will proceed in three sections. I will first offer a broad outline of Regulation theory and then introduce the key aspects of contemporary Islamic economic thought, focussing on its most developed field, Islamic finance. I will lastly bring these two topics together in speculating—antithetical though that is within Islamic economics—on what an Islamic economic formation, modelled in a Regulationist manner, might look like, and what this can tell us about the constitutive features and tensions of Islamic economics as it presents itself in these (post-)crisis times as a viable alternative to liberal capitalism.