In the light of the lasting development problems of many countries of the Muslim world – stretching from North Africa, across the Middle East to Southeast Asia – these states have by no means ruled out the search for economic concepts that promote development. Not least as a result of disappointment with the results of the capitalist and socialist economic systems, since the mid-1970s people have been progressively formulating ideas about an Islamic economic system, propagating them as an alternative to the unsatisfactory status quo.