As will appear in all the following essays, Fiqh, jurisprudence, and the Shari'a in general, form the background against which all the attempts in contemporary financial business find guidance and legitimacy. Taxation, insurance, banking, and even simple sales and loans contracts are bound in the theory of Islamic finance by the Shari'a. Because there is no tradition of an independent field of Islamic economics, the reliance of modern financial and economic transactions on the vast legacy of Islamic law acquires a further dimension, which is cultural. Islam does not claim a fully-fledged economist as its father, and the absence of an Adam Smith or a Karl Marx who might have written at least the outlines of a system of economics has forced the financial world to improvise, or to rely heavily on the wealth of material constituted by the corpus of the Shari'a. In a sense, the combination of law and finance in Islam is inevitable.
Finance has nowhere else to turn for guidance but the law.
Composite is also the set of milieux taken as references in these essays. Financial practitioners in the present Islamic world must keep an eye on several areas, simultaneously. Thus, Islamic banks must compare their profits not only amongst themselves, but also with the 'normal' banks. A third layer in the analysis, as well as in the practice of Islamic financial institutions, is historical. Islamic banks look for precedents in the early history of the Muslim community, because in the uncharted path which is taken at present, the example of the Prophet Muhammad and his Companions offers the solace of a workable model of the past, as well as an ideal to match.