Beyond Debt

Daromir Rudnyckyi’s Beyond Debt is a meticulous discussion of challenges that Islamic finance faces. It attempts to expand on details of debates on technical issues around risk management. Rudnyckyi’s main impetus for conducting this scrupulous work is that pervasiveness of debt is one of the main drivers of persistent inequalities in the contemporary world. He believes that debt is attached to capitalism and that capitalism erodes social relationships and promotes an individualistic culture. In his view, to correct capitalism, we should follow equity-based finance as a solution put forward by proponents of Islamic finance, who believe that Islam rejects debt-based financing. He considers globalized Islamic finance an effort to create a new social configuration through the formation of a distinctive type of capitalism. Indeed, Rudnyckyi’s main objective is to provide an anthropology of Islamic finance to challenge the debt-based financial system in the secular world. As he states, “I have shown how those seeking to reform Islamic finance today challenge the epistemology of debt by positing equity and investment as antidotes to debt-based finance” (220).

Capitalism · Debt · Economics · Equity (law) · Financialization · Islam · Political science · Finance · Islamic Finance and Banking Studies · Law