Islamic epistemology is premised on Divine Unity as the source of all knowledge. From this premise are derived flows of worldly knowledge. The emanating knowledge-flows in relation to all world-systems are shown to give form and meaning to cognitive and material constructs. This methodology is applied to the topic of trade and development in the Muslim World. 

The Muslim World has gone through a continued regime of low economic growth, inter-communal trade, high indebtedness and socio-economic problems of poverty, economic and political instability. The institutions of the Muslim World, namely the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) and the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) along with many of the Islamic banks and financial institutions that have mushroomed, particularly following the days of the high oil revenues and in recent times by the prospect of profitability in the new financial age, have all failed to achieve the goal of self-reliance in the Muslim World. The looming question then is why has this debility in the Muslim World continued, even though many other regional economic blocs have succeeded in paving the way to their progress in recent times? It is true that economic integration has been in the agenda of the OIC and IDB for quite sometime now. 

In this paper we will argue that this debility in the Muslim World stems from two causes. First there is her blind accession to the models of trade and economic development of the Western genre. These have been forced into the Muslim World by her member Governments and elites, who have overlooked the immense costs that are associated with these model implementations. Trade thus brought about with it diversion into northern markets, with only a slim 10 percent of world trade flowing between the Muslim countries (IDB Annual Report, 1999). The flow of foreign direct investments between Muslim countries is a nil and there are no effective flows of capital goods between them. These conditions show that the Muslim countries as a whole suffer from lack of coordination of their trade policies and fail to generate linkages among themselves as well among their domestic sectors of the economy. The second cause of the Muslim debility is the lack of political will, ineffective institutions, inefficiencies of human resource and technical know-how that have remained tied to technologies imported from the West and that remain least adapted to the existing levels of skills and knowledge in Muslim countries.

Development can never be a borrowed artifact. It must stem from and carry along with it the synergy of culture and values pertinent to the people who develop their futures. Against such a background stands the episteme of values and the rational ways of understanding and mobilizing such values in an indigenously self-reliant way. Above all, in such a milieu of development lies the 

1. Acknowledgment is made to SSHRC grant on "Trade and Development in the Muslim World". intrinsic role of participation on an extensive scale. These changes require institutions, economic agents, finances, businesses and markets that together respond to the role of participation through actions and responses among the agents and entities of in these areas.

For the Muslim World a relevance of development must thus commence from her own epistemological foundations of morals, values, models, methodology, thought process and the resulting technology, programs, socio-economic order, markets and institutions. All these together comprise the appropriate framework of the Islamic political economy capable of defining her own worldview and then applying this worldview to the issue of trade and development for general well-being.

Objective

The objective of this paper is to delineate such a worldview or praxis in the Islamic context that could have the power to help construct a new conscious future for the Muslim World and mobilize her own resources towards realizing this future prospect. This new model will be shown to stem from the normative background of Islamic epistemology premised deeply on Divine Unity as the source of absolute, perfect and complete knowledge. We will call this primal source as the Stock of Knowledge because of its immutable and unchangeable nature. From the Stock that comprises the Divine Law will be deduced flows of knowledge for understanding the world-systems according to the organization of thought, axioms, instruments and dynamic evolution of ideas, around which the multifaceted problems and issues of the Muslim political economy revolves. This value-based praxis will be shown to be contrary to the theory of knowledge of the Western genre. Hence the implications on human well-being, the material and cognitive perspectives emanating from the understanding and the application of the episteme of Divine Unity through the knowledge-flows will be shown to be quite different from those gained from Western epistemological roots. Our next task will be to apply this epistemological methodology of the Islamic worldview to the practical problem of trade and development. We will discover here the role of unity of knowledge on the issues at hand.

The Islamic Epistemological Model

The Interactive, Integrative and Evolutionary Process-Oriented Methodology

Contrasting Islamic Epistemology with Occidental Epistemology

Normative Issues of Trade and Development in Islamic Epistemological Perspective

Monetary Relations in Trade and Development from IIE-Perspective

Issue of Appropriate Technology, Trade and Development in IIE-process

Choice of Investments in IIE-perspective

Conclusion