Islamicity Indices

The Seed for Change

Hossein Askari, Hossein Mohammadkhan

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781137587695
• eBook ISBN: 9781137587718
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: International Relations

The extent of Islamicity, or what Islam demands, is measured to confirm that self-declared Muslim countries have not adopted foundational Islamic teachings for rule-compliant Muslim communities. Western countries, on the other hand, are demonstrated to have better implemented fundamental Islamic teachings for a thriving society.

1

Introduction

Abstract: Over a hundred years ago, Mohammad Abdou said: “I went to the West and saw Islam, but no Muslims; I got back to the East and saw Muslims, but not Islam.” Today the same words sum up what we explain in this book—the dimensions of Islamicity, or what Islam demands, and its practice around the world, to confirm that self-declared Muslim countries have not adopted Islamic teachings and have been left behind. In the chapters that follow we go on to show that the adoption and implementation of Islamicity Indices, along with a number of other initiatives, would enhance positive change in Muslim communities.

Askari, Hossein, and Hossein Mohammadkhan. Islamicity Indices: The Seed for Change. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. DOI: 10.1057/9781137587718.0007.

I went to the West and saw Islam, but no Muslims; I got back to the East and saw Muslims, but not Islam.

—Muhammad Abdou

Muhammad Abdou uttered these poignant words over a hundred years ago. The reason we have quoted him here at the outset is that the same words today sum up what we hope to explain—the dimensions of Islamicity, or what Islam demands, and its practice around the world, to confirm that self-declared Muslim countries have been left behind. We then hope to go on to show that the adoption and implementation of Islamicity Indices may enhance positive change in Muslim communities.

Beginning about ten–fifteen years ago, we started to hear the word “Islamists” to describe Muslims who were religious fanatics, hardliners, and fundamentalists. Even worse, acts of terrorism by Muslims were always, subtly and even not so subtly, connected to Islam. The backward state of many Muslim societies and their economies, including political and social freedom, provided commentators with ample ammunition. Unfortunately, many went on to attribute the failure of Muslim societies not only on Muslims but also on Islam. The Islam that they alluded to was not the Islam that we knew.

We asked ourselves how we would summarize the Islam that we knew to non-Muslims, or indeed even to Muslims. There was no readily available benchmark. Clerics, rulers, and governments insisted on telling Muslims what their religion was all about and discouraged any and all discussion and debate, and indeed in some countries even a simple question about the interpretations of the Quran outside state-sanctioned doctrines was deemed a subversive act and punishable under the law. Muslims were told to acknowledge the Oneness of Allah (swt) and Mohammad (sawa) as His messenger, to perform their daily prayers, carry out the Hajj pilgrimage if they were able, fast in the month of Ramadan as an act of self-purification, to contribute to the needy in order to cleanse their wealth, and maybe to simply “memorize” every word in the Quran for the most inquisitive and “religious” among them.

State-sanctioned interpretation of the Quran was not to be questioned. The teachings of the Quran were not to be debated and discussed as the philosophical foundation for establishing clearly defined institutions to enhance economic, social, and political justice, solidarity, and progress, but instead was used as a weapon to control and rule. This is not to say that the so-called five pillars of Islam were not also essential, but these five more or less mechanical duties (with the exception of Zakat) are duties that are very much directed toward the self as opposed toward the broader goal of Islam in furthering the Unity of Creation and establishing just and flourishing societies. In reality many Muslim rulers actively work to impede effective institutions, as the effective institutions envisaged in the Quran and practiced by the Prophet with their scaffolding of justice would undermine their absolute rule.

In a recent two-part article, The Economist addressed the practice of capital punishment around the world.¹ The articles reported that capital punishment was on the decline everywhere except in the Muslim World. The author of the article goes on to raise a number of points. While the Old Testament assigns death as the punishment for thirty-six transgressions, the Quran lists only two—spreading mischief and murder; and in the case of murder, the murderer may be even spared the death sentence if the family of the victim forgives him. In Islam the death sentence and stoning are intended for a few very serious crimes.

Under the Ottoman empire, just one person was stoned to death in 600 years. But since the early 1970s, when only Saudi Arabia ruled according to the Koran, the trend has been for ever-harsher punishments. In 1979 post-revolutionary Iran brought in sharia (Islamic law); Pakistan, Afghanistan and Sudan soon followed . . . A bigger reason for reliance on bloody sentences, often carried out in public, is the instability that plagues the Islamic world . . . Reformist scholars . . . argue that the use of religion to cloak political decisions is distorting Islam to such an extent that some rulings contradict the Koran. Today adultery is punishable by stoning, whereas the Koran prescribes 100 lashes—and 80 lashes for falsely accusing another.²

So we had to go back to the Quran and the life of the Prophet Mohammad to develop a benchmark that represented the teachings of the Quran and the life and practices of the Prophet. We started working in the areas that we knew best. We began with researching and writing books on Islamic economics, Islamic finance, and most importantly on human and economic development in Islam. These books were based on the teachings from the Quran and the practices of the Prophet Mohammad during his brief time on this earth. One of us had been fortunate to have the opportunity to collaborate with a number of outstanding Muslim scholars (Zamir Iqbal, Noureddine Krichene, and Abbas Mirakhor) to look into various aspects of Islamic economics and finance.³ He then had the fortune to collaborate and learn from Abbas Mirakhor about economic and social development in Islam.⁴

It was after a number of these books and numerous articles that we fully confirmed that what we understood as the essence of Islamic teachings had little to do with the practice of Muslim societies around the world and how Westerners saw Islam. There was no benchmark. Yes, there are the mechanical parts of Islam or the five pillars mentioned earlier, but there is much more to Islam that takes study, discussion, and self-examination. We needed a benchmark for measuring the practice of Islam, or a benchmark that could capture how a truly Islamic society should look like and how to measure how Islamic a society was, in other words, its “Islamicity.” So, we collaborated with a scholar of international finance to develop a number of indices that would measure the practice of Islam.⁵

Our first goal in writing this book is to give a preliminary answer to the question: How Islamic are Muslim countries? This is particularly important today since there is a growing misconception in the West that any shortcomings in countries with majority Muslim populations can be directly, or at least indirectly, attributed to Islam and that such shortcomings are a sign of some deficiency in Islam. Such conclusions have been put forward by a number of academics including Bernard Lewis (2003) and Timur Kuran (2007). Lewis blames Islam for lack of development and modernization in the Arab world, in its increasingly dogmatic rejection of modernity by many in the Islamic world, and in favor of a return to “a sacred past;” while Kuran argues that Islam and the Quran inhibit economic development due to “factors invoked as sources of retardation include fatalism, personalism, laziness, lack of curiosity, mistrust of science, superstition, conservatism, and traditionalism.”⁶ As to be expected, while some support the conclusions of Kuran and Lewis, others do not.⁷ Abbas Mirakhor is one economist who vigorously rejects their claims (Mirakhor 2003, 2007; Mirakhor and Askari 2010):

A survey of the literature on Islamic economics over the past few decades reveals a reasonable degree of agreement on at least two important and fundamental issues. The first concerns what Islam itself is about: “Justice and Equity.”⁸

There is no avoiding the fact that in Islam all behavior is rules-based, that ethical values underline the rules.⁹

[W]e have cited considerable evidence that Islam not only does not rule out economic progress, but that it clearly endorses several of the basic factors cited frequently by Western commentators as essential in historic economic transformation—private property, recognition of the profit incentive, a tradition of hard work, a link between economic success and eternal reward. Thus Islam seems unlikely to rule out rapid economic growth or even the construction of a strong system more or less capitalist in essence. On the other hand, Islamic principles cannot readily, if at all, be reconciled with economic “progress” that is contradicted by blatant economic and social injustice in the context of general social welfare.¹⁰ . . . Work, however, is not only performed for the purpose of satisfaction of needs and wants, but it is considered a duty and an obligation required of all members of society.¹¹

These conclusions stand in stark contrast to those of Kuran. It is this very fundamental difference of opinions that underscores the need to shed light on the question before us, namely, how Islamic are countries that profess Islam and are “labeled” as Islamic, so that shortcomings are appropriately attributed to rulers, clerics, and governments (and their policies), culture, religion, or to some other combination of factors.

Our second goal is to provide broad explanations for the Islamicity rankings of Muslim and non-Muslim countries. Why is it that Muslim countries have performed so?

Our third goal is to provide Muslims with a practical benchmark to start a conversation about what their religion demands. What should be the characteristics of their societies if they follow the rules outlined in the Quran and practiced by the Prophet? What should be their contours? What are the essential institutions that Islam recommends? What should they demand of their governments to establish the just society that Islam recommends? What must they, individually and collectively, do to put the Islamic paradigm into practice? And what must they ask of their rulers and of themselves? How best to make their governments accountable? These are both individual and collective responsibilities for affecting change.

In this book, we propose to develop five Islamicity Indices that are more refined and more easily updatable than what we have done in the past:

1Economic Islamicity

2Legal and Governance Islamicity

3Human and Political Rights Islamicity

4International Relations Islamicity, and

5Overall Islamicity (a combination of the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introduction
• 2  Fundamental Islamic Teachings
• 3  The Indices and Their Formulation
• 4  The ResultsIslamicity Rankings of All Countries
• 5  The Seed for Change in Muslim Countries and in Their International Relations
• 6  Concluding Comments
• Appendix 1 Islamicity Indices for Muslim Countries
• Appendix 2 Indicators and Sources
• Bibliography
• Index