Four books, which between them have appeared in English, Turkish, Indonesian and Bangla. Every translation was published in the country where it is read — Istanbul, Jakarta, Dhaka — and none of it passed through London or New York on the way. That is the part of this page I find most interesting, and I have written about why.
Also: all publications, with a link to a copy of each · curriculum vitae · lectures, courses and recorded talks
Islamic Economics: The Polar Opposite of Capitalist Economics
Akhuwat Foundation and the Islamic Research Institute, Islamabad, 2025 · first published 2022Islamic economics cannot be built as a branch of neoclassical economics, because the two rest on incompatible accounts of what human beings are, what wealth is for, and what a good life consists of. This book makes that argument at length, and then begins the positive work: what a system built on Islamic foundations would actually look like, in its treatment of markets, poverty, money and the purpose of economic activity.
- English
- Pakistan
- Turkish
İslam İktisadının Güncel Durumu — Nobel Yayın · Nokta Yayın · on Amazon
- Indonesian
- Persian
Translation requested, under discussion
Reviewed by Ambreen Sultan, JKAU: Islamic Economics 36(2), 2023, 135–145 · Developed from “Islamic Economics: A Survey of the Literature”, commissioned by the Religions and Development Research Programme at the University of Birmingham and published in three parts in Islamic Studies, 2009–2010 · Lectures and course material based on the book
An Islamic Worldview
Essays on the Conflict Between Islam and Modernity Kindle Edition, 2017 · second edition in preparationEducated Muslims today wear two lenses at once. Islam offers one account of what human beings are and what a good life consists of; a modern Western education supplies another, usually absorbed without noticing. These essays, written for the general reader rather than the specialist, trace that conflict to its roots — through European history as Muslims are rarely taught it, through colonisation and what it did to the schools of the colonised, and through the rise of market economies and the ideologies that travelled with them.
- English
- Bangla
- Urdu
Translation proposed, under discussion
Second edition, 2026. A print edition is in preparation: the original essays unchanged, newly typeset, and closing with a long new essay that answers the question the first essay raises and the first edition left open — what is actually to be done. It is under consideration by Ibn Haldun University Publications, Istanbul, for publication in English and in Turkish translation.
“Before pruning the branches of Western knowledge and thought to make them appear superficially compatible with Islam, he has focused on tracing their roots.” — Asif Adnan, from the preface to the Bangla edition · On the Bangla translation
Statistical Foundations for Econometric Techniques
Academic Press, New York, 1996A graduate text that takes the statistical theory underlying econometric practice seriously, rather than presenting techniques as recipes. It treats the decision-theoretic foundations of estimation and testing, and is candid about where the standard justifications for standard methods do not hold.
- Full text
- eBook
Reviewed by N. R. Swanson, Econometric Reviews
Agent Based Models: A New Approach to Economics
Textbook in preparationConventional economics derives the behaviour of an economy from the optimising calculations of a representative agent. Agent based modelling starts instead from a population of heterogeneous agents following simple rules, and lets the aggregate behaviour emerge. This book is intended as a teaching text for that approach, for students who have been taught the conventional theory and want to see what the alternative can do.
In draft. Current working papers are listed with the rest of my work.
On translations
I did not commission any of the translations above, and could not have. Translation into Turkish, Indonesian or Bangla is not something an author in Islamabad arranges. It happens when somebody in Istanbul or Jakarta or Dhaka reads an argument, decides it matters enough to spend months of their life on it, and finds a publisher willing to print the result. The people who do that work are close to invisible: their names appear in smaller type than mine, when they appear at all. If you have read one of these books in a language I cannot read, the person who put it into your hands did the harder part of the job.
Two translations are at present wanted rather than finished. An Urdu edition of An Islamic Worldview has been proposed to a publisher in Pakistan; Urdu is the translation readers ask me for most often. And a Persian translation of Islamic Economics has been requested for use as a supplementary text on an undergraduate course in Afghanistan.
If you would like to translate any of this work, or know a publisher who would, please write to me. I am glad to give permission, and glad to help.
Last updated October 2026.