Liberal Development Strategies: An Islamic Perspective

Abstract

State and policy vacuum is an unimaginable combination. State is anyhow concerned with policy making one way or another, even if it pretends to take the form of minimum or non-government intervention in the private businesses of the individuals because this is also insistence on a particular type of public policy. The nature of public policy and development strategy is ultimately linked to the public evaluation of objectives and the assessment of economic and social means. In fact public policy is a matter of attaching weights to different goals of the life. Therefore, the legitimation of a specific form of state policy is necessarily rested upon the underlying ends and values that society aims to achieve through state powers. A proper understanding of the current State of public policy for measuring economic success, both of individual and society, requires an understanding of the informational base about the ultimate values that are regarded directly relevant for making social judgment. This paper highlights two major trends of liberal development strategies-libertarianism and social democracy-and argues why religiosity must be considered an essential integral part of development, especially in a Muslim society. Neither liberal nor libertarian policy frameworks can guarantee the sustenance of religious individuality.