I found two very interesting videos on YouTube that discuss the question on why Muslim countries tend to be poor. I am sharing their links below.
Transcript
Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Jordan, or even Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen—these are all countries with two very clear things in common. First, they are very poor countries, and second, they are devoutly Islamic countries. Wherever we look, and with the exception of the oil-soaked Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf, countries with a Muslim tradition are generally extremely poor. To give just one more concrete fact, the average per capita GDP of Muslim-majority countries is $5,000 lower than the global average. The reason behind this curious divergence has been studied by numerous historians; pages and pages have been written on this subject. Yet, of all the existing theories, there are two that have deeply permeated society.
On the one hand, there are those who claim that Islamic religion and culture are in itself completely opposed to the idea of progress. For these people, Muslims reject almost on principle such things as commerce or democracy without going any further. While 60% of the world's countries are governed by democratic systems, only 14% of Muslims live under this model of political organization. On the other hand, there are those who argue for a second theory. There are people who claim that the problem of Muslim countries is not to do with their religion but rather the colonialism by Western countries—a colonialism that has exploited and continues to exploit all these countries.
Be that as it may, visual economic viewers, let us be clear: there may be certain cultural components that hinder development, and colonialism has certainly not done these countries any good. But let us tell you that from where we are sitting, none of these reasons seems to be the fundamental cause of the economic failure of the Islamic world. As many of you know, there was a time when the Muslim Middle East was the wealthiest region on the planet. In the year 1000, in the Middle Ages, the Muslim world accounted for 10% of global GDP. Muslims were a superpower while Europe was paralyzed in the Middle Ages. But that's not all. In terms of population, in the year 1000, Baghdad had between 500,000 and 1 million inhabitants, much more than any city in Western Europe. In fact, the largest European city of the time was also Islamic; we are talking about Cordoba of Al-Andalus in present-day Spain, a city with a population of around 450,000 at the time. After all, mercantile and financial culture was widespread in the Islamic world; the pilgrimage to Mecca ended up being the largest trade fair in the world, and even the scholars of Islam had very deep relationships with the commercial world.
And if you don't believe me, think about this for a moment: all of us here recognize great inventions such as algebra, modern medicine, or irrigation systems. Well, many of these inventions were created or developed precisely by the Islamic world of the Middle Ages. And so we can see that these countries were relatively very wealthy despite being Muslim.
Religion at that time did not seem to be a problem. Now, then, what about colonialism? Well, the truth is that by the year 1700, the Islamic world had gone from having 10% of the world's GDP to having only 2.2%. That is to say, these countries had already become poor long before colonialism, so that cannot be to blame for their failure.
So now the questions seem pretty clear: what happened between the 10th and the 16th centuries to bring the economic progress of the Islamic world to a screeching halt? What did Europe do right that none of these countries did? And perhaps the most important question: does this divergence more than 500 years ago explain the current situation?
Explaining the gap
Wherever we look, there is one thing about the Islamic world that is very striking. According to the records of the Courts of Istanbul and Galata in the 17th century, almost 80% of all companies in both regions had only two partners, and of course, there was no large company with hundreds of shareholders, such as the British East India Company. Islamic companies from the modern age onwards were always characterized by being very small, by having problems to develop. A clear example is that while in Europe the first large banks emerged in the 17th century with the Bank of Amsterdam, in the Middle East, they did not arrive until the second half of the 19th century. We are therefore talking about a delay of more than 200 years. The question is: why did the Islamic world lag so far behind? Why did its companies suffer from this kind of chronic dwarfism? If you are loyal follower of visual economic, you surely already know what we are talking about. The lack of large companies is usually a sign of lack of innovation and development. And how do we explain all this? Well, although there are many causes, there are at least three reasons that are absolutely key to this whole issue in Muslim countries.
Reason one: Inheritance law
Inheritance is very well regulated by the Quran and is very egalitarian. This means one cannot discriminate against the rest of the children by leaving all the inheritance to the firstborn. And yes, I know this sounds anything but backward. It's basically what exists today throughout the West. But while in the Middle East it was an age-old tradition, in Europe it didn't emerge until the Industrial Revolution. Even so, just because it seems advanced today does not mean that it was useful or positive at any stage of development. At that time, Muslim societies were polygamous, meaning that the elites had several wives and therefore many children, so inheritance was completely diluted. And why is that a problem? Well, you see, according to the business regulations existing at that time, when a person died, his company had to be dissolved with him. So if the sons wanted to keep their father's business, they had to rebuild the company from scratch. The problem was that since the inheritances were diluted among so many heirs, it was very difficult for a son to raise all the capital necessary to rebuild the company and get it going again. Knowing this, many entrepreneurs also made little effort to make their business projects last in the long term, as they knew that if they died, they would most likely disappear. So in other words, there was very little incentive to create large companies. However, there are even more reasons why large companies did not emerge.
Reason two: The prohibition of interest
Do you remember that we started the previous section talking about how the Muslim World took a long time to have big banks? Well, this is also very important for companies. After all, without banks, who provides loans to start up a business? It is certainly much more difficult. And it turns out interest-bearing loans were forbidden in Islam. However, unlike in other regions such as the Christian West, this prohibition took a very long time to be lifted. And let's see, obviously there were always exceptions. In fact, the religious leaders themselves publicly promoted ways of granting loans. According to Islamic law, for example, you could grant credit by buying a bedsheet from the borrower for 100 coins with the premise that he would buy it back from you for 50 coins later. Loopholes like these were plentiful. Even so, gimmicks were only gimmicks, and so the banking industry had a very difficult time growing. All this meant that while French companies could finance themselves at an average rate of around 5%, those of the Ottoman Empire had to finance themselves at more than 20%. This severe penalty on interest brought about a general backwardness in banking and, along with it, one of the most revolutionary inventions of the entire Middle Ages: bills of exchange. With these letters, Italian merchants, for instance, could travel without carrying cash, and these checks could operate with different currencies between several countries. And it is impossible to separate all this financial technology from the progress that was made in the banking sector with great names such as the Medice, which I'm sure will ring a bell with all of you. Well, in the Middle East, many merchants still sailed with bags full of gold on their ships, a real attraction for pirates and bandits. And although there was something similar to bills of exchange that were much older, in fact, than the European ones, they were very rare and much less flexible. If it was already complicated to set up a company before, this was the nail in the coffin. But even so, there is one more reason that is fundamental to understanding why companies in this entire region have barely prospered.
Reason three: A corrupt justice system
Let me ask you a question: why are there no great historical examples of collaborations between Islamic and Western companies? The answer is actually very simple. Because no Muslim could form companies without following the precepts of Islamic law. So if a European merchant wanted to have an Ottoman as a partner, he had to accept the rules of the Quran. Rules such as if one of the two dies, the company is automatically dissolved. This explains why within Muslim countries, it was precisely the religious minorities which were not subject to Islamic law that prospered the most. In these graphs, you can see how non-Muslims, despite being 55% of the population, accounted for almost 90% of all exports and imports from Beirut, a pattern that was repeated throughout the region.
But there is another reason related to justice that also put many Westerners off investing, and that is that Ottoman judges were anything but reliable. To begin with, the judges of the Empire, who were directly religious authorities, barely gave validity to written testimonies such as, for instance, a contract. Yeah, that's what I said. Of all the trials in which a contract was presented as evidence in Istanbul during the 18th century, only 3% were sufficient proof; the rest required the oral testimonies of many more people. In contrast to all this, in the Christian world, contracts began to be an absolute necessary proof in commercial trials from before 1400. And of course, if most evidence in Islam was oral and written evidence was not given importance, who do you think they listened to when two testimonies clashed? Basically, the judges followed two rules: if the trial was a Muslim against a non-Muslim, the Muslim won the trial. But on the other hand, if the trial was between two people of the same religion, the winner was always the richest. Corruption was the order of the day.
Be that as it may, the explanation we have just given you is somewhat incomplete. Many of these problems were also present in Christian countries, such as the prohibition of interest-bearing credit. In this sense, what we see in the Islamic world is not so much that it was a decadent society, but that it simply did not prosper. They weren't getting poorer; they just weren't getting richer. And we are not only talking about wealth; the types of labor contracts and the ways of forming a company with some partners remained almost unchanged for more than a thousand years. In the meantime, Europeans were inventing more and more innovative business structures. The sin of usury eventually disappeared, and all these limitations were diluted. Therefore, the real question to be answered is why didn't the Muslims follow suit? Why didn't these countries develop new types of businesses or copy successful Western businesses? Well, let's take a look.
God helps those who help themselves
I want you to look very carefully at the following chart. Before the 12th century, the main jobs in the Islamic world were related to commerce and industry. However, from the 12th century onwards, the number of jobs in bureaucratic and military affairs skyrocketed. The bureaucracy grew like wildfire; the merchants lost much of their importance to the military, and the religious sector became much, much more powerful.
The 'Ulema,' which literally translates as "those who have knowledge," were basically the religious elite of the time, authentic experts in Islamic law and theology. At first, these religious elites made their living from trade or patronage, but little by little, they moved away from these types of commercial activities and became closer and closer to political leaders such as sultans, viziers, and caliphs. Why is that, you may ask? The answer lies in legitimacy. A ruler can gain legitimacy because he is recognized by his people, because he is the descendant of a well-known figure, or because he is the son of a king. However, approaching religious authorities, at least in the Middle East, was the most important of all. Religion was the way to empower political leaders. But why did religion gain so much political influence? The answer lies in crop failure. You see, despite the fact that the Quran forbids feudal-type political organizations, a series of bad harvests, epidemics, and wars caused many people to move for refuge from the cities to the countryside, where at least food was available. And so emerged the 'Iqtas,' which would be something equivalent to the European fiefdoms. In this context, both the political and religious authorities had a very hard time. On the one hand, the sultans were losing a lot of power to the nobles of the feudal 'Iqtas,' and on the other hand, the religious scholars had lost much of their income due to less mercantile activity in the cities. With this in mind, the marriage between the sultans and the 'Ulema' (religious scholars) seemed the optimal solution Optimal for them, of course. For the rest of the citizens, it weighed down the economic growth of the region for almost 800 years.
In most cases, as a society evolves from primitive tribalism into an ordered civilization, a common religion permeates all its activities and helps to shape all its characteristic institutions. The rise of medieval Islam provides a typical example. Under such circumstances, the creation of political institutions entirely separate from the organization of the accepted religion seems hardly conceivable. On the other hand, Christianity broke into an ancient civilization that already had its own established hierarchy of government and its own sophisticated tradition of political thought based on non-Christian concepts."
Brian Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State
Perhaps where the political-religious alliance is best seen is in an event that left many historians completely confused: the prohibition of the printing press.
As you all know, Gutenberg's printing press was one of the most revolutionary inventions of mankind. In barely 50 years after its creation, more books were written than in the entire history of mankind, which spelled a tremendous economic boom. The Ottoman Empire, on the other hand, initially banned it for more than 200 years. And with all that we have told you, I'm sure you can understand why the printing press was a threat to the religious authorities. Just look at what happened in Europe with the Protestant Reformation.
The printing press did serious damage to the roots of the religious scholars' authority. It was no longer necessary for them to be present when the book was read. To compensate for the abundance of the author in the text, their monopoly on the transmission of knowledge was broken. The books can now be consulted by any Ahmad, Mahmud, or Muhammad who could interpret them as they wished.
Francis Robinson, Technology and Chance in Religion: Islam and the Impact of Printing
The literacy rate of Turkey and its corresponding counterpart in the Ottoman Empire reached that of 15th-century Netherlands in the 1960s. So, in 1960, Turkey had the level of the Netherlands back in the 1400s. Crazy!
In short, political authority depended enormously on religious authority, much more so than the kings of European kingdoms, even more so than figures such as the Catholic monarchs, even though they bore the word 'Catholic' in their names. In exchange for religious support, politicians were willing to make all kinds of concessions, often in the form of laws that explicitly prevented economic development. This explains why the inheritance laws mentioned before lasted for so many centuries despite being so damaging.
Of course, while this relationship between religious and political elite still exists in many Eastern countries, in others, it has been lost and does not seem to have flourished much. Even so, although it is not completely determining, we do know that in economic development, history matters and matters a great deal, and that the institutions of the past have a great influence on the institutions of the present.
The culture and the type of incentives that existed in those societies meant that when some of these countries embraced secularism, they did so in a very different way from the West, through movements such as Arab socialism. And we all know how that ended up.
But at this point, it's now your turn. Was there a decline in the Middle East, or just stagnation while its neighbors kept growing? What other reasons could explain this huge gap? Will we soon see an economic and democratic boom in any of these countries without the need for oil or tax havens?
Transcript
The second video is the testimony of an ex-Muslim from Southeast Asia. In this video, he talks about how Islam is seemingly designed to destroy its community and ensure it will never progress naturally as other communities would.
The problem with Islam is it compels itself into every aspect of a human's life. When I was a Muslim, I felt I was being trapped in an invisible cage and was always disturbed by what Islam has compelled me to do. The Islamic elements that contributed to this are first misogyny. We all are aware of the misogyny aspects of Islam: men are superior to women; only men are qualified to be a leader, even with something basic like a prayer; only men are allowed to lead or be an Imam. We read in the news that in certain Islamic countries, women aren't even allowed to go out on their own; some even ban women from driving, and most Muslim women must wear extra clothing to cover their whole body, and that restricts their movement. Therefore, there are jobs that Muslim women simply are not fit to do due to this, women's potential is blocked, and the community suffers as there are fewer people who contribute to development.
Second, hatred for other religions. Islam taught that the followers of all other religions are bad people. The term they use is 'kufar,' which means disbeliever. Due to this hatred, Muslims generally cannot cooperate with others that well. There is always something that would annoy the Muslims; for example, when the kufar is eating bacon or when the kufar is having a meeting during the prayer time or when the kufar women want to shake hands with Muslim men. These things, even though small, add up to hinder strong cooperation that could lead to progress.
Third, barbaric laws. This is a no-brainer. Islamic laws or Sharia is rubbish. It puts the harshest punishments on trivial matters such as personal choice. Islam would stone gaze to death in a blink but won't punish a rapist because there is no witness. Islam would kill an apostate but won't punish an Islamic scholar who sexually abuses a minor because the shame is punishment enough. Islam would lash a beer drinker but totally supports camel urine drinker. There is zero logic in Sharia. Due to these barbaric laws, many foreign investors would refuse to invest in such a country.
Fourth, wasting time with rituals. The final element of Islam that really damages the progress of a community is how Islam commands its followers to waste time. Sunni Muslims have to pray five times a day from early morning. Instead of having a good morning start, taking time to prepare a healthy breakfast, relaxing before the work commute, a Muslim must waste about 10 minutes for prayer. When I was a Muslim, I often had to rush right after I am done praying, often eating less breakfast or skipping it altogether. And in the afternoon, when you are supposed to take a break from work, relax while eating your lunch, again you have to quickly take the wudu and pray the zuhr prayer at work. In an Islamic country, the company, even a kufar company, has to provide a space for Muslims to pray; these are often a small room, and therefore Muslims have to queue to pray. Furthermore, the afternoon prayer is the longest at four rakats. Totally no peace of mind; instead, Islam puts Muslims into chaos as they fight for their turn to pray. Those who did not get a chance to pray during lunchtime, which is usually just 1 hour, end up praying at a later time during work hours, thereby making them dishonest in spending their working hours to do other things than actual work. Then Islam disturbs Muslims' work time again in the evening, where it is time to pray the asr prayer. Humans' minds need time to gather momentum in working; just when the momentum is going, suddenly Muslims stop everything and go to pray. Then when they return, they have to take time to build that momentum again. This greatly slows progress; furthermore, if they are working in a team, then the team had to go on without the Muslim members, and again impacting progress. Then Islam disturbs Muslim end of work time again at late evening, where it is time to pray the maghrib prayer. At the end of the day, where most people are tired due to working, Muslims are compelled to pray. And not only that, around dinner time again, Islam disturbs a Muslim for the final prayer of the day, a time where one should spend time with their family, talking to each other, having fun, and perhaps helping each other with house chores.
And these are just the compulsory rituals; some Muslims want to get extra brownie points from Allah that they even add the sunna rituals like Doha prayer, the prayer after the sun is up. Then there are also pre and post-prayer prayers. Yes, I am not kidding; there are even two rakat prayers before and after the compulsory prayers. Then there are also zikr and dua. Dua is recited after any prayers are completed, sort of asking Allah to give them this and that. It can be short or long. The zikr is repeating a particular praise to Allah or Muhammad in a certain number of times. For example, Islam taught Muslims to repeat Allahu Akbar 33 times, subala 33 times, and al 33 times. Some even do this for 1,000 times or 700 times. There are Hadiths that specify the number of times Muslims have to recite it in order to be forgiven or get blessings from Allah. These rituals truly waste time.
Then the most obvious time waster of the week: the Friday prayer and sermon. In an Islamic country, a kufar company have to give leeway to the Muslims during lunch while others take an hour break. Muslims are given a free pass to take 2 to three hours break. This is because every Muslims are obligated to do the Friday prayer at the mosque. They take the commute time to go to have lunch then to go to the mosque and listen to the sermon and pray. It is obligatory to listen to the sermon too and these sermons usually take about 30 to 45 minutes a long, speech about Islamic teachings and ended with a Dua, curses to the Jews, kufar, and other sects that are deemed deviant. Imagine, being taught hatred once a week for the rest of your life. All these elements are in the primary and secondary sources of Islam and Muslims are compelled to do them.
So now we know why a country that embraces Islam always can never progress as quickly as others. It is rooted from Islamic teachings itself, its ritual-centric dogma form over substance. Depending on the level of Islam implements, a country may sink deeper as evident in the Middle East. Look at Afghanistan in the 1970s and compare it to now. How low it has fallen. Any country that embraces Islam will sooner or later fall. It is up to the leaders to ensure that a moderate and liberal Islam is practiced since the damaging teachings are always available in the Quran and sunna. The risk of destroying your country will always remain in waiting for the next conservative leader to use.
I end with a final message: stay away from Islam.
