Islamic Economics

Banking and financial services conducted according to Islamic law, which forbids interest and requires risk to be shared. From institutional beginnings in the 1960s the sector has grown into a multi-trillion-dollar industry serving Muslim and non-Muslim customers alike.

The craft associations of Islamic cities, which set standards of workmanship, trained apprentices, supported their members and dealt with the authorities on the trades' behalf. They shaped artisan life and urban economies from the Abbasid to the Ottoman period.

Zakat is the obligatory charitable giving that constitutes the third pillar of Islam. A fixed percentage of wealth given annually to specified recipients, it purifies wealth, supports the needy, and embodies Islamic principles of economic justice.