MUSLIM WORLD TRADE HOUSE
The establishment of the proposed Islamic Ummah Village or Muslim
World Trade House may serve as a forum for informative and educative
advertisement. In my earlier work entitled "The Making of Islamic Economic
Society (1984)" it was pointed out that while informative advertising intended
for educating the customers is consistent with the Islamic principle of
beneficence, aggressive advertisements intended to manipulate the demand for
the product is clearly against the spirit of Islam, for, it involves wastage of
resources and implies its mis-allocation. The fact is that the Islamic firm seeks to
minimize the imperfection of market as far as practicable. All forms of
economic exploitation including monopoly business is not allowed in Islam. As
such artificial barriers to entry with a view to earn abnormal profit is also not
permissible in Islam. It must however be mentioned that the firm's choice of
objectives can be profoundly influenced by the amount of advertising
expenditure.
By assumption, unlike price reduction which may or may not increase
total revenue, informative advertising tends to increase the total revenue. So the
firm in an Islamic economy will be able to increase its sales up to a point of
acceptable level of profit.'"
ISLAMIC COMMON MARKET AND MONETARY UNIT
It follows then that Hajj provides perpetual opportunity to exhibit the
diverse new products of developing Muslim countries, provided an institutional
arrangement is made to visit these exhibition centers before or after the
pilgrimage. If the Hajj delegations comprise representatives of the members of
Islamic Chambers of Commerce, this may lead to the development of jointventure projects and eventual formation of inter-regional Islamic Common
Market. What is really needed is the imaginative leadership at the OIC level in
co-operation with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Apart from the prospects and possibilities of trade-co-operation, among
the Islamic countries, the evolution and introduction of Islamic Dinar should be
possible in the context of massive exchange of currencies of
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