Unlike the current world view as pushed by the Capitalist West, Islam considers that the main economic problem that mankind will ever have is that of distribution of wealth and not of production. In the eyes of the Capitalist West, there is relative scarcity of resources available in the world, and people’s demands for these resources are endless. Hence each nation and in fact, the world, should concentrate on more and more production. The higher the amount of wealth produced, the higher the number of people that will satisfy their demands through the process of economic activity, or so the theory goes.

Islam distinguishes between basic needs which include food, clothing and shelter, and luxurious wants which include all those things that are not necessities in life. It views that there are enough resources to satisfy the basic needs of all people all the time and to satisfy some of the luxurious wants of people, and that the economic problem is that of correct distribution of wealth and not merely involving increasing of production. There are enough resources to feed, clothe and house everybody in the world fully as can be seen by the food mountains of Europe and the excesses of the few rich in each country, including the Third World countries. In accordance with their Capitalist philosophy of maximising profit, we find governments paying farmers to produce less as in the EC countries, or even to destroy what has already been produced as happened in poor Latin America where in the past a huge amount of coffee was burnt to maintain a certain price level. Far more wealth leaves the poor countries of Africa for the rich west than vice versa due to unjust economic deals. Even at the height of the Ethiopian famine crisis in the late eighties, the country was exporting millions of dollars worth of resources to the West. Allah (swt) says in the Qur’an,.