Sustainability by the Ethics of Unity of Knowledge Between Economy, Science, and Society by the Qur’anic Methodological Worldview of Complementarities

Masudul Alam Choudhury Choudhury (School of BusinessCape Breton University, Canada)

Journal of Islamic Finance and Economic Studies
Vol. 2 No. 1 (2026): Journal of Islamic Finance and Economic Studies

Background: Sustainability increasingly requires a framework capable of integrating economic development, scientific advancement, social wellbeing, and ethical responsibility, yet prevailing approaches often treat these dimensions as separate or only loosely connected domains. Aims: This study aims to develop a Qur’anic epistemological model of sustainability grounded in the Unity of Knowledge (Tawhid) and to explain how moral consciousness, endogenous ethics, complementarity, circular causation, evolutionary learning, and wellbeing can be integrated into a coherent analytical structure. Method: A conceptual-theoretical design was employed, combining interdisciplinary synthesis, comparative interpretation, mathematical formalization, and a limited analytical illustration using Islamic participatory financing data for 2011–2018 drawn from the Islamic Development Bank Annual Report 2019. Results: The resulting framework represents sustainability as a recursive process in which economy, science, and society interact through knowledge-induced complementarities, while the wellbeing function serves as the principal evaluative criterion. The analytical illustration shows that Murabaha, leasing and loan-based financing with Istisna’a, and Awqaf financing did not move uniformly over the observed period; most estimated relationships were positive, although one negative cross-financing coefficient indicated incomplete complementarity. The knowledge or consciousness model produced positive coefficients for all three financing variables, with a combined elasticity of approximately 0.9752. Conclusion: The study concludes that normative compatibility alone does not ensure systemic sustainability, because sustainable wellbeing depends on reciprocal and ethically embedded relationships among interconnected socio-scientific domains. The proposed framework contributes a unified epistemological perspective that positions ethical consciousness as an endogenous organizing principle linking knowledge formation, institutional interaction, and long-term sustainability.