ABSTRACT
This chapter explains how Islam can enrich debates on business ethics to enhance the life conditions of human societies. It provides a critical overview of Islamic guidelines for businesses and consumers from a stakeholder perspective and highlights their rights and responsibilities in the market. Drawing on the natural laws, the model includes the Creator as the absolute owner of resources on earth where individuals and organizations blessed with such wealth are responsible for utilizing their available resources in order to maximize societal gains. The author reflexively calls upon both Muslims and non-Muslims to attend to this form of ethics.
This chapter explains how Islam can enrich debates on business ethics to enhance the life conditions of human societies. It provides a critical overview of Islamic guidelines for businesses and consumers from a stakeholder perspective and highlights their rights and responsibilities in the market. The chapter focuses on the natural laws; the model includes the Creator as the absolute owner of resources on earth where individuals and organizations blessed with such wealth are responsible for utilizing their available resources in order to maximize societal gains. The worldviews of ethical standards from the religious and secular rational perspectives are quite different from each other. Islam like other monolithic religions encourages trade, enterprise and engagement in economic activities to earn livings and search for bounties of God. Islam regards mankind as a steward of God on earth with a clear mandate to take care of the environment.
