This paper examines the ethical foundations of the Islamic financial industry which is strongly criticized for its similarity with conventional finance. In this paper, we argue that this criticism is based on the consequentialist reasoning. The deontological considerations are largely ignored when the focus is on aggregate returns and associated product features. We build an economic model which allows us to examine the implementation of deontological rules in the Islamic financial products along with examining their consequences. We show that the market forces may cause the returns and the attributes of Islamic financial products to converge with conventional finance even though the industry may be adhering to the Islamic deontological rules. We build a model to show that there may exist ‘Epsilon States’ where the deontological rules are followed by the Islamic finance industry, but their impact is not significant. We argue that the source of these ‘Epsilon States’ could be either moral uncertainty or costly monitoring. The presence of these ‘Epsilon States’ enable Islamic financial institutions with weak ethical commitments to create financial products where the deontological rules are followed, but their impact remains insignificant.

本文考察了伊斯兰金融业的伦理基础，该行业因其与传统金融的相似性而受到强烈批评。在本文中，我们认为这种批评是基于结果论的推理。当重点放在总回报和相关产品功能上时，义务论的考虑在很大程度上被忽略了。我们建立了一个经济模型，使我们能够检查伊斯兰金融产品中道义规则的实施，并检查其后果。我们表明，即使该行业可能遵守伊斯兰道义规则，市场力量也可能导致伊斯兰金融产品的回报和属性与传统金融趋同。我们建立了一个模型来表明可能存在伊斯兰金融业遵循道义规则的“厄普西隆国家”，但它们的影响并不显着。我们认为，这些“厄普西隆状态”的来源可能是道德不确定性或成本高昂的监控。这些“厄普西隆国家”的存在使道德承诺薄弱的伊斯兰金融机构能够创建遵循道义规则的金融产品，但其影响仍然微不足道。