Abstract:

There are disputes on the nature of property that is adopted by Islamic sacred texts (the Qur’an and the Sunnah) and Islamic legal thought, and on the kind of equilibrium that has been established between private and collective ownership. This article analyses the nature of property on the basis of Islamic sacred texts and Islamic legal thought. For this purpose, evidences for the concept of private ownership will be analyzed together with the evidences for God’s absolute sovereignty over universe. It will be argued that because of the harmful nature of collective ownership for the society, private property is adopted. The article also analyses the classical approaches that justify private property from the viewpoint of Islamic jurisprudence and economics and modern theories which argue that the concept of property that was adopted is individual or collective.

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