Some 1.3 billion people live in countries where Islam is the dominant or state religion. Over the centuries, Islam has declined from a wealthy and influential culture, historians say, to one of poverty and low levels of education.
Angry militants blame the U.S. and Europe for modern Islam’s economic failure reasoning that the West’s wealth must have been stolen from the East.
Poverty levels in many Islamic countries are extremely high. Although the following figures are the latest available, some date back to the late 1990s.
Experts say that within the 46 Islamic countries, those who want to modernise are at odds with fundamentalists who want to return to the pattern of nomadic and agricultural civilizations that dominated many centuries ago.
Whether Islamic societies continue to retreat or join the modern world depends greatly on the educational opportunities afforded to today’s Islamic youths.
Source: Peter Benesh, Behind Radical Muslim Discontent: Economic Failure of Modern Islam, Investor’s Business Daily, September 27, 2001.
For more on Economic Growth, Culture & Political Systems
http://www.ncpa.org/pi/internat/intdex3.html
FMF\3 October 2001
