Virtually everywhere it is the law of the land, sharia rule has historically produced relative poverty compared to those societies practicing capitalism under the Judeo-Christian-Enlightenment tradition or, these days, in places like China and India too. (The exception to this occurs if you are the fellow sitting on top of the oil well). We have written about this before, but perhaps a summary is in order:

1) Relative Poverty. Sharia societies have historically been poor, apparently in part as a consequence of their ideology, which would appear to value religious principles more highly than material gain. The total GDP of the Arab world, minus oil revenues, has been less than that of tiny Finland. To make a side-by-side comparison, Israel’s GDP per capita is about 20x that of Egypt. As another exemple, China has gone from nothing to a $2 trillion economy over the last quarter century while Iran has stagnated for 25 years under revolutionary Shiism mostly at $100 billion or so. These are self-inflicted wounds of sharia.

2) High Unemployment. Sharia societies historically have experienced high levels of unemployment. Iran’s youth unemployment is 34% or more, Saudi Arabia’s unemployment is 25%, and the Palestinians have unemployment of 25-40% (Israel’s is 9%). Interestingly, these dysfunctional numbers in sharia countries carry over to Muslim populations in the West: in France and England, Muslim unemployment is 3x the national average. (We can’t help recalling the words of Khalid ibn Al-Walid on loving death over life when we read these depressing statistics.) Female labor force participation figures tell a similar story, which is logical when you think about the consequences of almost half the population being structurally out of the work force.

3) Little technology and innovation. Sharia societies have historically had a spotty track record on innovation, the mother’s milk of keeping up in the Modern World. Saudi Arabia recently went six years without issuing a patent, Iran issued only one patent a couple of years ago, and Indonesia issued 30 patents over the last five years. By contrast, China went from issuing zero patents thirty years ago, to hundreds of thousands today. In the US, where more than 150,000 patents are issued annually, more patents were granted last year to the people of Utah than have ever been issued in the entire history of all sharia societies combined. (We recall Bernard Lewis’s oft-repeated comment that Islamic languages do not have a good equivalent for the word “curiosity.”)

We are certainly open to counter-examples to the statistics we have presented.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 9th, 2006 at 9:16 am and is filed under business, General, Left of Left, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.