The Crisis of Islamic Civilization

The economic news is worse still. For all the oil wealth and untrammelled capitalism, the 57 member countries of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (the OIC) account for 22 per cent of global population yet generate only 6 per cent of world GDP. An Islamic alms tax (zakat) of 2.5 per cent on the sovereign wealth funds of Gulf countries would produce an annual $75bn wealth transfer to the poorest Muslim states, but this isn’t on the agenda. Key Islamic values like justice, fairness and education have been ignored. Meanwhile, an illusory counter-movement to the collapse has been led, in the Sunni world, by Wahhabism. This puritanical reform movement is painfully literalist, unimaginative, and viciously sectarian. As anti-intellectual as it is anti-mystical, it rejects the flexibility of the traditional schools of law. Its influence has been projected far beyond the central Arabian desert by oil money and the ungodly Saudi-US alliance. The result is a schizophrenic response to the west—passivity and collaboration on the one hand, nihilistic terrorism on the other.