The study of how individuals, institutions, and societies allocate scarce resources — encompassing markets, policy, development, and behavioral dimensions.

Economics operates under assumptions about human motivation and rationality that are empirically contestable and morally consequential. Questions of distributional justice, the commodification of essential goods, and the relationship between economic growth and human flourishing are built into the discipline's structure.

Islamic economic thought — particularly the prohibition of riba (interest) and the institution of zakat — reflects a coherent alternative theory of value, obligation, and circulation. The Sufi tradition's critique of hubb al-dunya (attachment to the world) is not anti-economic but rather a challenge to the conflation of wealth with worth.