Teaching Comparative

Economic-Political Culture of Islam

The teaser for the article excerpted below offers this come on: "Communism fails the rich, capitalism fails the poor but Islam as an economic system appears to fail both. Failure to prepare their young for the modern world leaves Islamic countries over-dependent on the progeny of Muslims in secular democratic countries such as those in Europe. Therein lies the case for separating religion and politics across all these countries."

The article published at Asia Times Online, offers a wealth of assertions your students could identify and evaluate. As such, it's a great exercise in critical thinking. On top of that, you could ask them how well the author's ideas apply to Iran and Iranian expatriates.

Rich bad, poor bad

"...the broader issue [is] how poorly the people from Islamic countries compare with those in the rest of the developing world. What explains the strange stagnation of Islamic countries in the socio-economic arena?...

"The failure of industry [in Islamic countries] is in essence a failure of capitalism. In most countries where wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few... a functioning financial system helped to intermediate risks. This is not possible in strict Islamic societies as the religion bans usury, thus disallowing the flow of capital to the people needing it the most, ie, young entrepreneurs. Faced with uneconomic returns at home, most Middle Eastern rulers deposit their money at higher rates with European banks...

"A second failure... is the absence of appropriate education for restless youth. Religious education, rather than grounding in modern sciences, remains the norm. Thus while the production of muezzins is guaranteed, hiring a petroleum engineer can be tricky..

"Religious education also produces famously insular people. A US magazine's poll of Arab youth found that very few had heard of the Apollo moon landings, and indeed all of them dismissed such feats as US propaganda...

"It is in poor countries that Islamic government fails to the greatest extent. A cursory look at populations' inequality index (the Gini coefficient) shows that the world's second- and third-largest Islamic countries, Pakistan and Bangladesh, have worse indicators than most other developing countries...

"... much of the gains from the system of micro-credit [for which Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen bank was awarded the Nobel Prize] can be wiped out by political shifts. Sadly, such a shift is now happening in Bangladesh, where the increased radicalization of the population has caused foreign donors to scoot. Additionally, tough Islamic laws that the radicals would like to impose will hit the people who benefit most from micro-credit, namely Bangladeshi women...

"The most often cited examples of Islamic countries that have produced significant improvements in living standards are Malaysia, Indonesia and Turkey. That observation fails because all three are secular if not democratic countries. The rule of law, as understood in Western societies, has been a key factor in their success...

"The broader exception to the points raised above have been the successful Muslim entrepreneurs to emerge across European countries... Muslims have done extremely well in Britain, Germany and France... it does push through the point that it is not the people who fail but rather their system that fails them.

"Muslims in open, democratic societies do extremely well; those in closed, religiously controlled societies do not..."

posted by Ken Wedding @ 8:05 AM