Comments by "Winston Smith" (@kryts27) on "Why are Muslim Countries Doomed to Poverty?" video.

  1. Empires are not (per se) all bad. The Umayyad Caliphate (read empire) and the even more enlightened (for it's time) Abbasid Calphate. The problem is that Islam has resisted moving into modernity since the 18th century. It's theology in modernity does not show enlightenment. While conservative Christianity has (grudgingly) accepted enlightenment values (not without violence, such as the Inquisition), this is maybe because the enlightenment movement originated in Western Europe. Islam is reactive towards enlightenment values, not supportive or branching in a creative way from it (in it's own way). While this impass remains, Islamic countries remain wholesale backward and reactionary and economically poor without advanced science and industry to increase productivity and living standards. The separation of mosque and state has, by and large, not properly occurred in Islamic countries (except where forced by a secular dictatorship).
    1
  2. I had no idea that a corrupt system of trade and commercial laws was in place in many Islamic countries. Western economics is not beyond the intellect of Muslims. A corporation or even a private company can be legally treated as an individual entity, so wealth and assets of that company can be wholesale sold to another buyer. Plus woman in Islamic countries are hindered in making businesses themselves or to be participants in the mainstream economy, hence wealth generating is diminished from 50% of the population. Islamic backwardness (economically, culturally and in education) is a receipe for violent revolution, especially with the number of headstrong young adults in Islamic countries.
    1