How Islamic are Muslims?
Islamic law demands much of Muslims; how successfully do they fulfill its precepts?
Scheherazade S. Rehman and Hossein Askari of Georgetown University provide an answer in their 2010 article "How Islamic are Islamic Countries?"
In it, they establish the Islamic teachings and then calculate how well
these are applied in 208 countries and territories. They posit four
separate indices (economics, the law and governance, human and political
rights, international relations); then they combine these into a single
overall index, which they call the IslamicityIndex.
Perhaps surprisingly,
the 10 countries that top the list of Islamicity turn out to be,
starting at the top, New Zealand, Luxembourg, Ireland, Iceland, Finland,
Denmark, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Netherlands.
The bottom 10 are Mayotte, the West Bank and Gaza, Somalia, the Isle of
Man, Eritrea, Sudan, the Channel Islands, Iraq, Comoros, and Angola. Put
differently, none of the top 10 "Islamic" countries has a
Muslim-majority, but in seven of the bottom 10, half or more of the
population is Muslim.
Malaysia, a barely
Muslim-majority country, has the highest ranking in their list, coming
in at No. 38 from the top. Kuwait, a fabulously rich oil exporter, has
the highest ranking for a thoroughly Muslim-majority country, at No. 48.
Jordan has the highest ranking for a thoroughly Muslim-majority country
without oil wealth, at No. 77.
Taking the 57 members
of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation as a sample (and ignoring
population sizes, so that the Maldives with 300,000 has the same weight
as Indonesia with 237 million), their aggregate score is No. 139, or
distinctly below the halfway mark of No. 104 (i.e., midway through the
208 countries surveyed). In other words, according to this study, the
world as a whole willy-nilly abides by Islamic precepts better than
Muslim-majority countries do.
The real aggregate Muslim number is probably well below No. 139, in part for technical and statistical reasons,
in part because the survey was published in 2010, before the Turkish
prime minister went rogue and before the Arab upheavals began: Turkey
ranks a relatively high No. 103, Mali No. 130, and Syria No. 186; their
current scores would certainly be much farther down the Islamicity
scale. Combining these factors, I estimate the real aggregate score for
Muslims today to be No. 175.
The IslamicityIndex helpfully quantifies my two-part theory (as presented in books published more than 30 years ago on slave soldiers and Islam in public life)
about Islam and politics: (1) Islam's demands are inherently too
difficult for Muslim rulers to achieve, alienating Muslim populations
from their governments, leading to a wide gulf between rulers and ruled,
and to greedy autocrats who disdain their subjects' interests. (2)
Compounding this problem, since about 1800 Muslims have realized that
they lag behind non-Muslims in nearly every sphere of human activity,
causing such symptoms as despair, irrationality, conspiracism, and
Islamism.
When asked about my thesis, Askari disagrees. In a letter to me, he blames "opportunistic religious leaders" who "have distorted Islamic teachings and have hijacked the religion for their own personal gains." Their greed has enabled "oppressive and corrupt rulers to thwart the development of effective institutions," he argues. Finally, colonial and imperial powers have "exploited these conditions for their own gains." In other words, he sees an evil triad of religious, political, and Western forces creating a vicious circle that blocks progress.
When asked about my thesis, Askari disagrees. In a letter to me, he blames "opportunistic religious leaders" who "have distorted Islamic teachings and have hijacked the religion for their own personal gains." Their greed has enabled "oppressive and corrupt rulers to thwart the development of effective institutions," he argues. Finally, colonial and imperial powers have "exploited these conditions for their own gains." In other words, he sees an evil triad of religious, political, and Western forces creating a vicious circle that blocks progress.
My answer: When
presented with the failure of a seemingly noble ideal (communism,
Islamic law), adherents instinctively blame human failure rather than
ideals; we must try harder, do better. At a certain point, however, when
the goal is never realized, it becomes logical and necessary to blame
those ideals themselves. Fourteen centuries of failure should be a
sufficiently thorough experiment.
Take the specific case
of Saudi Arabia: If application of the Wahhabi doctrine for two and a
half centuries, a stable government and control of Mecca and Medina for
nearly a century, and unearned riches beyond the dreams of avarice still
leave the country ranking a miserable No. 131, how can any society hope
to attain Islamic ideals?
Askari blames Muslims; I
blame Islam. This difference has enormous implications. If Muslims are
the culprit, believers have no choice but to continue trying to fulfill
Islamic teachings, as they have tried for more than 1,000 years. If
Islam is the problem, the solution lies in reconsidering the traditional
interpretations of the faith and reinterpreting it in ways conducive to
successful living. That effort might begin with an exploratory trip to
New Zealand.
Daniel Pipes (http://www.danielpipes.org/) is president of the Middle East Forum.
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