Ma`rifat Eqtesadi

The epistemology of Islamic economics should mainly address four interconnected questions about the knowledge of Islamic economics’ nature, conditions for obtaining, sources, and validity. Answering these questions forms the limits and boundaries of the epistemological foundations of Islamic economics. Muslim economists have not done much to clarify these limits and to explain the epistemological principles of Islamic economics. Even the separation between religion and Islamic economics in the field of the knowledge of Islamic economics is also confusing. Using an analytical method, this paper examines the boundaries of the epistemological foundations of Islamic economics and the proposed principles. According to the research hypothesis, the epistemological foundations of Islamic economics belong to at least eight areas of the nature of the knowledge of Islamic economics, its value identity, Islamic criterion, structural characteristics of cognition, relation to naming, sources of knowledge, and the relationship between cognition and reality. Based on the research findings, cognitive knowledge in Islamic economics has a combined identity, is value-based, and Islamity of its scientific propositions depends on the propositions of Islamic economic religion. Accordingly, the formation of the Islamic economic religion does not have a foreign condition; however, the realization of the science of Islamic economics depends on the (practical / hypothetical) realization of the institutional structures of the Islamic economic religion in society. Access to the network of the propositions of Islamic economics depends on the use of all three sources of reason, sense and revelation. Finally, Islamic economics is based on reformism and foundation in terms of truth and justification. The epistemological foundations influence both the methodology of Islamic economics and the content of Islamic economics views.