The book Ontology of Islamic Economics by Mohammad Javad Tavakkoli was published in 2025 by the Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute. This 336‑page Persian volume constitutes the third installment in a four‑part series on the philosophy of Islamic economics, following An Introduction to the Philosophy of Islamic Economics (Epistemology of Islamic Economics) and Axiology of Islamic Economics.
Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, the book examines the ontological assumptions underlying theories of Islamic economics. These assumptions are categorized into three levels:
- Cosmogonic (concerning the origin of creation),
- Cosmological (concerning the structure of existence), and
- Anthropological (concerning the place of human beings in the Islamic economic system).
The book is structured into seven chapters:
- Chapter I: The nature of ontology in Islamic economics.
- Chapter II: The relation of deism and evolutionary theory to Islamic economics.
- Chapter III: Analysis of individualism and collectivism in Islamic economics.
- Chapter IV: Examination of the concept of rationality within an Islamic framework.
- Chapter V: Rational choice theory.
- Chapter VI: Spontaneous order in the market.
- Chapter VII: The concept of causality in Islamic economics.
In the final chapter, the author demonstrates that causal mechanisms in Islamic economics extend beyond relationships among economic variables to encompass value structures, human intentions, and the teleology of economic behavior. This perspective enables the redefinition of economic theories and facilitates a departure from purely empirical and statistical models characteristic of conventional economics.
