Developing a Nation in a Real Sense: The Case of 21st Century Pakistan
Modern economics has evolved into a system in which financial resources are concentrated in the hands of a small group of elite families who control firms and banks. Banks generate credit by mobilizing the small savings of wage-earning families, yet this credit is overwhelmingly directed toward elites, enabling them to expand their enterprises and accumulate profits. In this structure, the financial system primarily reinforces elite dominance rather than empowering ordinary citizens.
The science of economics has therefore left almost the entire population dependent on jobs created by these elites. Families who spare portions of their income in hopes of building enterprises find their savings absorbed into the banking system, only to be recycled as credit for elite-controlled firms. This mechanism forces human capital fall into the labor market, where they must sell only their labor for wages determined by employers. Economics, thus, reduces most of the entire human resource to become wage laborers whose livelihoods depend entirely on the opportunities elites choose to provide.
Those who do not, or cannot, participate in the labor market are declared “out of the labor force” and are effectively excluded from the market economy altogether. Modern economics has little to say about this beyond population, leaving it beyond its scope and outside its mechanisms of prosperity. Economics, thus, fails to provide nations with frameworks for inclusive access to capital, equitable participation, or meaningful livelihoods for those beyond wage labor.
The world is now developing through a market economy, which allows only a few business families to prosper and live a luxurious life, while the rest of the families are made to either live a comfortable life only as wage slaves or decide to live to survive out of the market economy, where the human capital is forced to stay unproductive.
This exclusion underscores the incompleteness and irrational science by making a small group of elite-families control the entire financial capital to accumulate wealth by using the unethical and immoral instrument called Interest (Riba) and deprive the human capital of the rest of the families avail the productive opportunities outside labor market and empower the human capital to contribute to the growth of real wealth of nation and not merely monetary wealth.
Our vision is to enable every nation to develop such institutions that will enable those also to prosper whom Economics has deprived to prosper by declaring them not deserving to be part of the market economy. Our vision has one invisible reality that the science of Economics failed to recognize as part of the wealth of a nation. Prosperity has no prosperity unless it is shared. How to institutionalize Generosity. This is our mission. Complement the market economy with the moral economy. This is how the economy will make the real wealth of the nation grow. The existence of the moral economy, along with the market economy, tells every nation how to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals required by the UN by adopting the World Bank’s prosperity sharing strategy.
The science of economics has therefore left almost the entire population dependent on jobs created by these elites. Families who spare portions of their income in hopes of building enterprises find their savings absorbed into the banking system, only to be recycled as credit for elite-controlled firms. This mechanism forces human capital fall into the labor market, where they must sell only their labor for wages determined by employers. Economics, thus, reduces most of the entire human resource to become wage laborers whose livelihoods depend entirely on the opportunities elites choose to provide.
Those who do not, or cannot, participate in the labor market are declared “out of the labor force” and are effectively excluded from the market economy altogether. Modern economics has little to say about this beyond population, leaving it beyond its scope and outside its mechanisms of prosperity. Economics, thus, fails to provide nations with frameworks for inclusive access to capital, equitable participation, or meaningful livelihoods for those beyond wage labor.
The world is now developing through a market economy, which allows only a few business families to prosper and live a luxurious life, while the rest of the families are made to either live a comfortable life only as wage slaves or decide to live to survive out of the market economy, where the human capital is forced to stay unproductive.
This exclusion underscores the incompleteness and irrational science by making a small group of elite-families control the entire financial capital to accumulate wealth by using the unethical and immoral instrument called Interest (Riba) and deprive the human capital of the rest of the families avail the productive opportunities outside labor market and empower the human capital to contribute to the growth of real wealth of nation and not merely monetary wealth.
Our vision is to enable every nation to develop such institutions that will enable those also to prosper whom Economics has deprived to prosper by declaring them not deserving to be part of the market economy. Our vision has one invisible reality that the science of Economics failed to recognize as part of the wealth of a nation. Prosperity has no prosperity unless it is shared. How to institutionalize Generosity. This is our mission. Complement the market economy with the moral economy. This is how the economy will make the real wealth of the nation grow. The existence of the moral economy, along with the market economy, tells every nation how to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals required by the UN by adopting the World Bank’s prosperity sharing strategy.
Micro-enterprise funding to redirect these pooled resources into small businesses, cooperatives, and community enterprises.
• Profit-sharing: Ensures that returns are distributed fairly among contributors and reinvested into further welfare projects.
• Capacity building: Provides training, mentorship, and support to families entering entrepreneurship, reducing dependency on wage labor.
• Micro level: Empowering families to become independent producers, not just wage earners.
• Social level: Builds trust and solidarity by motivating altruistic behavior in the private sector.
• Global level: Contributes to SDGs by reducing poverty, inequality, and exclusion from the market economy.
• Welfare company system: Savings → Welfare company → Community enterprises → Shared prosperity → Reduced dependency.
• Profit-sharing: Ensures that returns are distributed fairly among contributors and reinvested into further welfare projects.
• Capacity building: Provides training, mentorship, and support to families entering entrepreneurship, reducing dependency on wage labor.
4. Impact Pathways
• Macro level: Supports national prosperity by diversifying economic participation beyond elite firms.• Micro level: Empowering families to become independent producers, not just wage earners.
• Social level: Builds trust and solidarity by motivating altruistic behavior in the private sector.
• Global level: Contributes to SDGs by reducing poverty, inequality, and exclusion from the market economy.
5. Contrast with Current Economics
• Current system: Savings → Banks → Elite firms → Wage jobs → Wage dependency.• Welfare company system: Savings → Welfare company → Community enterprises → Shared prosperity → Reduced dependency.
The rest of the families remain dependent on these elites to employ human resources as wage/salary slaves. Pakistan’s economy has been operating in this manner since its independence, 78 years ago, when approximately 20 families dominated the economy.
Pakistan now has 150 million human resources, 75 million are working as wage slaves or salary slaves, and the rest of the 75 million are sitting idle, living a starving life, waiting for the elites to make the economy grow and create jobs for them. Pakistan is not an exception. Economies of all developing countries, Muslim or non-Muslim, are working this way. This is due to the financial system that now governs the economy worldwide.
Credit created by the banks is given as a loan at interest to the most creditworthy individuals selected by the bank from the wealthiest families. This is a Riba-based system that facilitates the circulation of financial resources, thereby promoting economic growth at the macro level. In contrast, at the micro level, hunger and poverty continue to grow.
A few elites make banks. Banks then make a few elite capital owners. They create credit by keeping in reserve the deposits that people make, which are spare with them and would hardly withdraw them. The few owners thus make the growth in the economy of capital owners, many of them will be the owners of the bank as well., The growth in their business leads to increased employment. Increased employment leads to a greater flow of deposits into the banks. Banks create more credit. That is how financial resources circulate in the economy, and that is how the economy continues to prosper in terms of national income, called GNP.
This financial system and economic system created by it contradict the economic principles outlined in the Quran and Sunnah, which governed the economy in the State of Madinah from the 7th century until the fall of the Khilafat-e-Osmania in the 17th century. The financial system everywhere contradicts Islamic rules for finance.
• a) Economic growth requires financial resources (not human resources)
• b) Capital can be provided by creating loans (credit), eliminating the need for household savings.
• c) Loans can be given only at interest for a stipulated period determined by the bank.
• d) Only high-net-worth individuals can get the loans to make the economy grow
The Quran and Sunnah guide us to achieve economic growth
• a) Economic growth requires entrepreneurship of human resources, not of financial resources.
• b) Capital is made from savings that families make from Rizq (the Quran 2:219), not by creating credit.
• c) The loan must be Riba-free; Focus strictly on fulfilling the need rather than on recovery.
• d) Everyone can access loans to help grow the economy, the poor first.
Pakistan now has 150 million human resources, 75 million are working as wage slaves or salary slaves, and the rest of the 75 million are sitting idle, living a starving life, waiting for the elites to make the economy grow and create jobs for them. Pakistan is not an exception. Economies of all developing countries, Muslim or non-Muslim, are working this way. This is due to the financial system that now governs the economy worldwide.
Credit created by the banks is given as a loan at interest to the most creditworthy individuals selected by the bank from the wealthiest families. This is a Riba-based system that facilitates the circulation of financial resources, thereby promoting economic growth at the macro level. In contrast, at the micro level, hunger and poverty continue to grow.
A few elites make banks. Banks then make a few elite capital owners. They create credit by keeping in reserve the deposits that people make, which are spare with them and would hardly withdraw them. The few owners thus make the growth in the economy of capital owners, many of them will be the owners of the bank as well., The growth in their business leads to increased employment. Increased employment leads to a greater flow of deposits into the banks. Banks create more credit. That is how financial resources circulate in the economy, and that is how the economy continues to prosper in terms of national income, called GNP.
This financial system and economic system created by it contradict the economic principles outlined in the Quran and Sunnah, which governed the economy in the State of Madinah from the 7th century until the fall of the Khilafat-e-Osmania in the 17th century. The financial system everywhere contradicts Islamic rules for finance.
• a) Economic growth requires financial resources (not human resources)
• b) Capital can be provided by creating loans (credit), eliminating the need for household savings.
• c) Loans can be given only at interest for a stipulated period determined by the bank.
• d) Only high-net-worth individuals can get the loans to make the economy grow
The Quran and Sunnah guide us to achieve economic growth
• a) Economic growth requires entrepreneurship of human resources, not of financial resources.
• b) Capital is made from savings that families make from Rizq (the Quran 2:219), not by creating credit.
• c) The loan must be Riba-free; Focus strictly on fulfilling the need rather than on recovery.
• d) Everyone can access loans to help grow the economy, the poor first.
How to make a Riba-Free economy grow better
Create Islamic banks with four Islamic features to compete with Riba-based banks? Apparently, a Mission Impossible. The Islamic banks created by Sharia scholars could only partially show feature (c).
Mission Possible is: Give al-afw to a Waqf bank and create Riba-Free credit for the poor first from the income that Waqf banks create from the Awqaf properties that Waqf banks use for building and see how al-afw credit starts going from poor to the rich, making the economy grow faster than Riba banks could even imagine.
Mission Possible: Theory is simple and can be proved mathematically and graphically, but I prove it from a story of a tiny village in the valley of Kashmir, about which the poet said:
“Gar Firdaus bar roo-e zameen ast, hameen ast-o hameen ast-o hameen ast”
گر فردوس بر روئے زمین است، ہمن است و ہمیں است ہمیں است
This village, with about 50 impoverished families, had a small madrasa (Islamic school). Its manager, Maulana Zareen, happened to meet someone who knew about his social work, and he was asked to make two skill centers: an IT center for boys and a sewing center for ladies. The center charges 10$ per student, and Zareen asked his contacts for a donation as Sadaqah. When the thirty students graduated, Zareen advised them not to seek traditional employment but to leverage their skills as a business, assuring them that they could secure startup capital to launch any venture.
Mission Possible: Theory is simple and can be proved mathematically and graphically, but I prove it from a story of a tiny village in the valley of Kashmir, about which the poet said:
“Gar Firdaus bar roo-e zameen ast, hameen ast-o hameen ast-o hameen ast”
گر فردوس بر روئے زمین است، ہمن است و ہمیں است ہمیں است
This village, with about 50 impoverished families, had a small madrasa (Islamic school). Its manager, Maulana Zareen, happened to meet someone who knew about his social work, and he was asked to make two skill centers: an IT center for boys and a sewing center for ladies. The center charges 10$ per student, and Zareen asked his contacts for a donation as Sadaqah. When the thirty students graduated, Zareen advised them not to seek traditional employment but to leverage their skills as a business, assuring them that they could secure startup capital to launch any venture.
Zareen gave the following report to his friends who helped him make this story a success:
“Thank God, today on January 15, 2025, the Jamil Khan Skill Development Center in Barri Bandi, Chitral, Topi, Azad Kashmir was inaugurated... [Full text continued as provided]... All of this has been made possible by Allah Almighty’s grace, His support, and the assistance of compassionate helpers. May Allah accept our efforts in His presence and reward all the helpers with goodness. Ameen.”
The Model Aspect: Convert any money donated as charity into a Waqf (endowment), for providing a capital in perpetuity for a sustainable source of income. It is a model of Charity and Endowment, and making income from Endowment to remove hunger, illiteracy, and poverty from a community within a year.
Zareen made a request on WhatsApp: “Donate any amount you wish for this cause. Your support for this cash endowment will, Insha ’Allah, remain in the waqf property until the Day of Judgment, just like the Waqf of Uthman ibn Affan (may Allah be pleased with him). Our goal in creating this waqf is to use all income generated solely for human resource development and for providing Riba-free loans... [Full text regarding SECP and inheritance follows as provided]... This acceptance of a Cash Waqf-based financing company by a major religious party and the readiness of a big religious party to make the financing company Riba-free to give Riba-free loans to impoverished families bring hope that a clear model of a real Riba-free bank will soon become available.
Dr. Muhammad Fahim Khan
The Model Aspect: Convert any money donated as charity into a Waqf (endowment), for providing a capital in perpetuity for a sustainable source of income. It is a model of Charity and Endowment, and making income from Endowment to remove hunger, illiteracy, and poverty from a community within a year.
Zareen made a request on WhatsApp: “Donate any amount you wish for this cause. Your support for this cash endowment will, Insha ’Allah, remain in the waqf property until the Day of Judgment, just like the Waqf of Uthman ibn Affan (may Allah be pleased with him). Our goal in creating this waqf is to use all income generated solely for human resource development and for providing Riba-free loans... [Full text regarding SECP and inheritance follows as provided]... This acceptance of a Cash Waqf-based financing company by a major religious party and the readiness of a big religious party to make the financing company Riba-free to give Riba-free loans to impoverished families bring hope that a clear model of a real Riba-free bank will soon become available.