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It seems they are missing an important factor, namely 4) the personal, cultural and economical impairment due to the religion of Islam. Nobody has time to thriv

It seems they are missing an important factor, namely 4) the personal, cultural and economical impairment due to the religion of Islam. Nobody has time to thrive when they have to pray five times a day, when almost every thought and action is dictated by an old book and when half of their human potential is hidden in cloth bags.

ihsw 10y ago
Islam is unrelated to the emotional and intellectual deficits imposed upon victims of poverty and disenfranchisement -- not only that but I think there's a strong argument in that a task performed five times daily repeated ad infinitum doesn't cause cultural impairment, nor does the age of a given mandate. Furthermore, I think maximizing for "human potential" is a red herring -- the inevitable end-result is exercising control over a given population to exploit their human potential and TBH that sounds revolting. We should be given the freedom to live our lives out regardless of someone else's small and personal ambitions, including dedicating our lives to practicing Islam.
- jomamaxx 10y ago
  Preventing women from driving, from being in public without family members, from touching others, from having other see their face etc. etc. is 100% part of the 'intellectual deficit' imposed by Arabic flavours of Islam. Islam is a religion, an ideology and a culture all blended into one. Parts of it are bad. But I don't think it's any of that. I think it's something simpler: there is nothing in the desert. It's really hard to build a civilization of nothing. Absent civilization, even if there is Oil in the ground ... the surpluses won't be managed effectively or fairly. I think that were the Arab world to be green and lush, it would be a better place, because civilization and power would have developed from an agrarian base ... which is more distributed, then higher level civic institutions can come into place etc. With desert+oil, basic and important institutions don't get a chance to form, and you have a Fedual system which depends on the intelligence and benevolence of the Feudal Lords, aka House of Saud, Qatari 'royal' family etc.
  - ihsw 10y ago
    You are confusing Islam with the cultures of the Arabian Peninsula -- it may be the birthplace of Islam but Muslims have done much more than eek out a meager existence among sand dunes. Education curriculum, fairness, equality, social justice, civic duty, personal accountability -- all of these things are similarly as present in Islam as they are anywhere else. Also, governance by royal decree is one of the most un-Islamic things possible. This is not lost on the Gulf monarchies so they are forced into a submissive position when confronted by the relevant Sunni Islamic authority.
    - spriggan3 10y ago
      > Education curriculum, fairness, equality, social justice, civic duty, personal accountability The problem is which form they take. Women are clearly not men's equal in the Koran. The Koran talks about all these subjects, it doesn't mean it promotes these. According the to Koran(and the Bible) , slavery is acceptable, the Koran even tells how Muslims should treat their slaves. Is that the fairness,equality and social justice you are talking about ? Or are you twisting the meaning of these words at first place ? You can argue the Koran is a product of its time,which it totally is. Saying that is a good way to invalidate the fact that it should be taken as "the final, perfect word of \"God\" " if it should be read in context. But it's forbidden for Muslims to criticize the Koran at first place... so back to square one.
      - ihsw 10y ago
        Inequality between genders in Islam is a difficult subject to discuss without pointing out that many female Muslims in the Western world are afforded the same rights and freedoms as male Muslims -- indeed, Muslim women have achieved equality without being permitted to enter Islam's holiest sites. That said, women are most definitely treated differently under Islamic rule as outlined by Islamic law, and there is no point of view that can deny this. Some would argue that women and men are inherently different and that it would be imprudent to ignore this, and this line of reasoning leads us to unpleasant situations like women being denied the same opportunities to achieve success as men are. Millions of Muslims in the West find slavery to be barbaric and none of them own slaves, and not only that but one of the central tenets of Islam is donation to make slavery unnecessary. This is evidence of fairness, equality, and social justice not only being compatible with Islam, but encouraged. That said, slavery is permissible in Islam under certain circumstances, and the primary basis for this permission is the profound lack of protection afforded to non-Muslims outlined in Islamic teachings. This is intentional and personally I hope it falls by the wayside. Finally, criticism of the Quran is a touchy subject. The study of mathematics was regarded as being unable to bring perfection to the human soul, but many Muslims studied it nevertheless and humanity advanced in indescribable ways. Death was similarly regarded as an act of God regardless of the cause of death, but the study of medicine was defended as not being un-Islamic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidah
- DanielBMarkham 10y ago
  People see and act through their own personal philosophies and personalities. You can't peel those off and have any kind of reasonable conversation about culture and history. When faced with impending death, pessimists might commit suicide. Optimists might struggle on. People with under-developed personalities might just listen to the first person they run into. But whatever the case, their choices will be broadcast through their religious and cultural values. Those committing suicide could self-terminate. Or they could be suicide bombers. Those deciding to carry on could become artists or prophets. Or they might open a house of worship. In addition, the definition of "impending doom" changes depending on your philosophy of life and worldview. It's a red herring to blame everything on religion. People are people. But it's also a red herring to refuse to accept the role of religion in determining how well cultures thrive. Whatever myths you choose to believe in has a profound impact on how you see the world around you and how you react to it.
  - ihsw 10y ago
    I'm not going to deny that many are judged based on their religious and cultural values, and that there are correlations between all Muslims that point to certain trends that some find alarming (eg: irrationality, lack of self-preservation, and strong desire for justice), but I cannot accept that such trends are a reflection of Islam. Culture shock happens and when it happens on a massive scale then there will obviously be issues, and I think that is what we are witnessing now. It may take a generation but I am hopeful that Western society will co-exist with Islam peacefully, regardless of the negative interpretations some people have. You could do the same with a billion and a half people anywhere -- give them a unifying identity, tell them to live in every nation on Earth, and make most of the poor and uneducated. There will be a central global point that people call home, there will be culture clashes, and there will be demagogues taking advantage of the situation.
    - DanielBMarkham 10y ago
      My post had nothing to do with how people are judged. It was all about how each individual reacts to the same stimulus differently depending on what's inside their head -- which includes religion to a great degree. Yes, there's a huge culture shock happening. Christianity has been quite flexible over the years. People still think that if aliens land that Christians will freak out. These are people who don't know their history. Whatever kind of weirdness comes along, somehow Christians absorb it into whatever they believe. Then they'll insist that this was what they believed all along :) To adherents, this is probably both a bug and a feature. The jury is still out with Islam. With so many adherents, it's bound to morph into something. The pressure is certainly high. But I have no idea what the characteristics of that thing is or how much traction it will have in the community. Like I do all people, I wish them the best. Belief systems based on tribal forms of society aren't going to go far in a internet-connected world without a lot of change. Just ask the Judaism folks. Thanks for the reply!
- hacker42 10y ago
  Sure, the praying alone would not create a huge amount of cognitive load, but it is just symptomatic of an overly binding religion. It must be terribly confusing as a Muslim to see other cultures vastly outperforming them even though these cultures don't follow the word of Allah, e.g. by not throwing people off of cliffs for having wild gay sex and not stoning women for adultery. These are literally the kinds of rules, fears and confusions that shape Islamic cultures.
  - ihsw 10y ago
    Overly binding is subjective and many benefit from the strong social support provided by Islamic communities, and furthermore to feel jealousy towards other cultures is very un-Islamic. That said, I continue to assert that your arguments are red herrings -- attempts to indirectly answer one question with another's answer. Fixing the issues you brought up are unrelated to removing Islam's influence on the people of the world, unless you feel that Islam's binding influence on large populations is prohibitively restrictive to the point that is an impediment to any social program of any scale on Earth. If that is the case then the natural progression will lead us to war, and many nations around the world have already been lead to this conclusion.
    - hacker42 10y ago
      I think addressing cultural flaws more directly could make such social programs more effective.
      - ihsw 10y ago
        Calling them cultural flaws and saying they need to be addressed is one of the worst first steps you can take, but setting aside that there are already many Muslims integrating into Western society without having directly addressed the those issues. Simply allowing them to participate in Western society is enough to sufficiently "address" those issues, as many will naturally gravitate towards more progressive and liberal lifestyles. I have seen many Muslim women driving, walking outside, and showing their faces without incident, but I think it's important to point out that there are plenty of non-Muslim cultures that punish unmarried women for public displays of affection (including simply being present with a non-relative male).
metaphorm 10y ago
I think that's covered under 2) about Salafism/Wahabism
thesimon 10y ago
>when almost every thought and action is dictated by an old book Compared to the US, where political actions are sorely based on facts and the bible and religion are completely irrelevant. /s It's not really an issue only in Islam, people make a lot of actions because of an even older book - the bible - as well.
_delirium 10y ago
Is there much evidence for the specific choice of religion as a casual factor? Methods of blending a traditionalist religion with modern life seem much more important than which religion you start with. For example, Judaism imposes an extremely strict set of rules that govern almost every conceivable aspect of daily life. And indeed you find that strictly observant Orthodox Jews are mostly unable to function in a modern society; a large percentage of those living in Israel are unemployed and supported by state funds. However a large number of Jews have chosen to be somewhat looser in their adherence to Jewish law, which seems to be the key, rather than Judaism itself being more compatible with modernity.
- Retric 10y ago
  There is clear evidence that Catholic areas have lower levels of economic growth than Prodestent areas even within same country. So, religion really does impact economic growth. But, I don't think there is hard evidence to brake it down to specific causes within each religious group. PS: While you may disagree with this, there is a lot of research into this topic: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=religion+economic+development&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiKqM7dw7nOAhXGOxQKHfyoARIQgQMIHDAA https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=religion+economic+devel...
  - tmsbrg 10y ago
    Correlation vs causation. Does protestantism improve productivity, or did the cultures where productivity is valued highly more easily convert to protestantism?
  - maze-le 10y ago
    Do you have any sources for that claim? I would be genuineley interested in the methodology of this research. Its just anecdotal, but here in Germany it is the other way around. The Catholic south is prosperous, whereas the protestant north (east) is poor. I can think of examples where the opposite is true (Belgium) but I highly doubt that there is a casual connection. In Belgium for example the catholic (and more important industrialized) wallonia was very prosperous during the 19th century, in opposition to the more agrarian flanders. Nowdays its flanders that is more prosperous, and the old industrial regions in the south suffer from the effects of deindustrialisation.
abalone 10y ago
Because Christians would never pray a lot, slavishly follow an old book or oppress women?
- vixen99 10y ago
  And we hear of the appalling results of this almost every day across the world, or have I missed it?
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  Well they did, which is exactly how we know it's all a massively bad idea.
curiousgal 10y ago
>Nobody has time to thrive when they have to prey five times a day Ah huh. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age
- wtbob 10y ago
  People always point to that, but the Islamic Golden Age was no more Islamic than Bonnie & Clyde's benders were financed by Bonnie & Clyde (rather than the folks whose money they'd stolen from banks). The fruits of the so-called Islamic Golden Age were planted by Classical civilisation, watered and tended by Zoroastrians, Jews & Christians — and harvested by Islam. Indeed, even during the 'Golden Age' many of the great lights were not of Islamic extraction (e.g. al-Khwarizmi, who was from a Zoroastrian family and may have converted out of economic or political expediency). That's not to belittle the contributions of actual Mohammedans (e.g. Avicenna, who really did do more than just repeat his Classical forebears), but on the whole the Islamic Golden Age was what one would expect when a supremely wealthy but weak empire (the Eastern Romans) is conquered by poor but strong barbarians: the conquerors are rich & happy for decades, living off of the wealth they have taken. Like Anglo-Saxons building their mead-halls over Roman mosaics, they enjoyed the products of a higher civilisation but were unable to match them (the Umma being rather larger than the Heptarchy, they had a much bigger base from which to decline, and a correspondingly-longer period of relative comfort).
  - mustaflex 10y ago
    "many of the great lights were not of Islamic extraction" ... really? many of them ? can you please write "many" more from "non Islamic extraction" "El-Khwarizmi, who was from a Zoroastrian family and may have converted out of economic or political expediency" ...So one particular scholar is not really a "muslim", soo it must that everything else worthy must be from non-muslim people "but on the whole the Islamic Golden Age was what one would expect when a supremely wealthy but weak empire (the Eastern Romans) is conquered by poor but strong barbarians: the conquerors are rich & happy for decades, living off of the wealth they have taken." ...So they were just plunderers? This is textbook western self-propaganda.
yardie 10y ago
Have you met any Muslims that pray? Do you know anything about it all? 2 of those prayers occur before and after business hours. And even if they were working there's not a whole lot going on at 4:30am. 2 are short coffee break level prayers. A little meditation and a quick baslama and get on with it. And the longest, conveniently occurs around lunchtime anyway. I fail to see how prayer affects anyone's potential in a negative way.
- agumonkey 10y ago
  And in our times of hectic impatient noisy lives, 5 pauses to reflect, even on "old religious ideas" (I'm fairly biased against religion), isn't a bad thing IMHO.
- wookey 10y ago
  here at my workplace co-workers go to "pray" once an hour. And by prayer i mean cigarette breaks. These common interruptions are accepted and I watch as it takes minutes on return to get back to speed. those are the ones that reduce productivity. not sure the islam prayer cycle is that corrosive by a long way
- avisser 10y ago
  Agreed. I work with a devout Muslim. I think I'd more effective if I took meditation breaks as regularly as he takes his short, prayer breaks.
  - yardie 10y ago
    My MIL is Muslim. When we are visiting and it's time to pray she finds a quiet corner, unrolls her rug, does her prayer, and is back before the tea has finished steeping. I've spent more time getting to the break room at work than she has on afternoon prayer. So I fail to see the connection between the 2-3 scheduled daily prayer times and production. If that is the case, coffee, cigarettes, lunch, and bathroom breaks are equal contributors.
yodsanklai 10y ago
I don't know about arabic countries and how religion affects their development but I tend to believe your comment isn't accurate. I've known personally a lot of muslims originally from those countries (colleagues, students, classmates, friends...). None of them preys five times a day or are hidden in cloth bags.
lukasm 10y ago
praying is not a problem. The biggest problem is lack of debt. Wanna open a new business? You can't take credit. Problems with cashflow? You can go to a debt prison. Forget about mortgage for a house etc.
- 7Z7 10y ago
  Maybe I'm misunderstanding you. But mortgages exist in lots of Muslim majority countries. Are you really suggesting that Muslims don't take on debt? You can take out a mortgage in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bangladesh, Morocco.. They were the first four I checked.
  - mkaziz 10y ago
    GP is referring to the fact that interest is forbidden in Islam. However, you can still get interest-based loans in Muslim countries. They're just branded differently.
    - 7Z7 10y ago
      So GP's point is invalid than, no? Muslims take on debt and business loans regularly.
  - lukasm 10y ago
    You can something similar to mortgage or credit in UAE as well, but being late on the payment has devastating consequences. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2194633/Luxury-high-performance-cars-left-abandoned-British-expats-fear-jailed-debts.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2194633/Luxury-high-... It has consequence for enormous part of a life. For example, I was traveling using metro in Dubai. I had 5 dirham on my travel card and the trip I wanted to take costs 3 dirham. I couldn't enter the train, because the maximum charge is 8 dirham, so I could have negative balance.
John23832 10y ago
That's absurd. Everything we do in the modern world stands upon technological, mathematical and scientific success brought to us by the middle east. Don't let you (imo apparently biased) thoughts about islam distort history
agumonkey 10y ago
How long is a prayer in Islam ? it's an interesting idea but it's hard to believe that this has such a significant impact.
- mkaziz 10y ago
  2-4 minutes. About the length of a standard coffee break
  - agumonkey 10y ago
    Alright, the point above is thus irrelevant.
MisterBastahrd 10y ago
Sure, this is the same reason that nobody who smokes cigarettes has ever been successful. All those breaks they take in the middle of the day.
gkfasdfasdf 10y ago
You could not be more wrong. I am a software engineer, and I pray five times a day. My wife is a physician, prays five times a day, and wears the headscarf. If our household income is any indication, we are thriving just fine.
- hacker42 10y ago
  It is obviously inaccurate to write "nobody" and I am sorry if I have hurt your feelings by this rhetorical device. I've merely pointed out a general tendency that Islam numbs social, economic and scientific progress, i.e. that the influence on the conflicts in the Arab World with regards to religion is not just a matter of differences in beliefs, but rather an underlying condition of a kind of belief which prevents progress. The niqab and burqa, the excessive structuring of day-to-day life, Islamic extremism, as well as oppression of women, gays and atheists are simply symptomatic examples for an overly binding religion. I've also only pointed out that it plays a significant role in the grievances in the Arab World, not that is the only cause.

ihsw 10y ago

Islam is unrelated to the emotional and intellectual deficits imposed upon victims of poverty and disenfranchisement -- not only that but I think there's a strong argument in that a task performed five times daily repeated ad infinitum doesn't cause cultural impairment, nor does the age of a given mandate. Furthermore, I think maximizing for "human potential" is a red herring -- the inevitable end-result is exercising control over a given population to exploit their human potential and TBH that sounds revolting. We should be given the freedom to live our lives out regardless of someone else's small and personal ambitions, including dedicating our lives to practicing Islam.

jomamaxx 10y ago
Preventing women from driving, from being in public without family members, from touching others, from having other see their face etc. etc. is 100% part of the 'intellectual deficit' imposed by Arabic flavours of Islam. Islam is a religion, an ideology and a culture all blended into one. Parts of it are bad. But I don't think it's any of that. I think it's something simpler: there is nothing in the desert. It's really hard to build a civilization of nothing. Absent civilization, even if there is Oil in the ground ... the surpluses won't be managed effectively or fairly. I think that were the Arab world to be green and lush, it would be a better place, because civilization and power would have developed from an agrarian base ... which is more distributed, then higher level civic institutions can come into place etc. With desert+oil, basic and important institutions don't get a chance to form, and you have a Fedual system which depends on the intelligence and benevolence of the Feudal Lords, aka House of Saud, Qatari 'royal' family etc.
- ihsw 10y ago
  You are confusing Islam with the cultures of the Arabian Peninsula -- it may be the birthplace of Islam but Muslims have done much more than eek out a meager existence among sand dunes. Education curriculum, fairness, equality, social justice, civic duty, personal accountability -- all of these things are similarly as present in Islam as they are anywhere else. Also, governance by royal decree is one of the most un-Islamic things possible. This is not lost on the Gulf monarchies so they are forced into a submissive position when confronted by the relevant Sunni Islamic authority.
  - spriggan3 10y ago
    > Education curriculum, fairness, equality, social justice, civic duty, personal accountability The problem is which form they take. Women are clearly not men's equal in the Koran. The Koran talks about all these subjects, it doesn't mean it promotes these. According the to Koran(and the Bible) , slavery is acceptable, the Koran even tells how Muslims should treat their slaves. Is that the fairness,equality and social justice you are talking about ? Or are you twisting the meaning of these words at first place ? You can argue the Koran is a product of its time,which it totally is. Saying that is a good way to invalidate the fact that it should be taken as "the final, perfect word of \"God\" " if it should be read in context. But it's forbidden for Muslims to criticize the Koran at first place... so back to square one.
    - ihsw 10y ago
      Inequality between genders in Islam is a difficult subject to discuss without pointing out that many female Muslims in the Western world are afforded the same rights and freedoms as male Muslims -- indeed, Muslim women have achieved equality without being permitted to enter Islam's holiest sites. That said, women are most definitely treated differently under Islamic rule as outlined by Islamic law, and there is no point of view that can deny this. Some would argue that women and men are inherently different and that it would be imprudent to ignore this, and this line of reasoning leads us to unpleasant situations like women being denied the same opportunities to achieve success as men are. Millions of Muslims in the West find slavery to be barbaric and none of them own slaves, and not only that but one of the central tenets of Islam is donation to make slavery unnecessary. This is evidence of fairness, equality, and social justice not only being compatible with Islam, but encouraged. That said, slavery is permissible in Islam under certain circumstances, and the primary basis for this permission is the profound lack of protection afforded to non-Muslims outlined in Islamic teachings. This is intentional and personally I hope it falls by the wayside. Finally, criticism of the Quran is a touchy subject. The study of mathematics was regarded as being unable to bring perfection to the human soul, but many Muslims studied it nevertheless and humanity advanced in indescribable ways. Death was similarly regarded as an act of God regardless of the cause of death, but the study of medicine was defended as not being un-Islamic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidah
DanielBMarkham 10y ago
People see and act through their own personal philosophies and personalities. You can't peel those off and have any kind of reasonable conversation about culture and history. When faced with impending death, pessimists might commit suicide. Optimists might struggle on. People with under-developed personalities might just listen to the first person they run into. But whatever the case, their choices will be broadcast through their religious and cultural values. Those committing suicide could self-terminate. Or they could be suicide bombers. Those deciding to carry on could become artists or prophets. Or they might open a house of worship. In addition, the definition of "impending doom" changes depending on your philosophy of life and worldview. It's a red herring to blame everything on religion. People are people. But it's also a red herring to refuse to accept the role of religion in determining how well cultures thrive. Whatever myths you choose to believe in has a profound impact on how you see the world around you and how you react to it.
- ihsw 10y ago
  I'm not going to deny that many are judged based on their religious and cultural values, and that there are correlations between all Muslims that point to certain trends that some find alarming (eg: irrationality, lack of self-preservation, and strong desire for justice), but I cannot accept that such trends are a reflection of Islam. Culture shock happens and when it happens on a massive scale then there will obviously be issues, and I think that is what we are witnessing now. It may take a generation but I am hopeful that Western society will co-exist with Islam peacefully, regardless of the negative interpretations some people have. You could do the same with a billion and a half people anywhere -- give them a unifying identity, tell them to live in every nation on Earth, and make most of the poor and uneducated. There will be a central global point that people call home, there will be culture clashes, and there will be demagogues taking advantage of the situation.
  - DanielBMarkham 10y ago
    My post had nothing to do with how people are judged. It was all about how each individual reacts to the same stimulus differently depending on what's inside their head -- which includes religion to a great degree. Yes, there's a huge culture shock happening. Christianity has been quite flexible over the years. People still think that if aliens land that Christians will freak out. These are people who don't know their history. Whatever kind of weirdness comes along, somehow Christians absorb it into whatever they believe. Then they'll insist that this was what they believed all along :) To adherents, this is probably both a bug and a feature. The jury is still out with Islam. With so many adherents, it's bound to morph into something. The pressure is certainly high. But I have no idea what the characteristics of that thing is or how much traction it will have in the community. Like I do all people, I wish them the best. Belief systems based on tribal forms of society aren't going to go far in a internet-connected world without a lot of change. Just ask the Judaism folks. Thanks for the reply!
hacker42 10y ago
Sure, the praying alone would not create a huge amount of cognitive load, but it is just symptomatic of an overly binding religion. It must be terribly confusing as a Muslim to see other cultures vastly outperforming them even though these cultures don't follow the word of Allah, e.g. by not throwing people off of cliffs for having wild gay sex and not stoning women for adultery. These are literally the kinds of rules, fears and confusions that shape Islamic cultures.
- ihsw 10y ago
  Overly binding is subjective and many benefit from the strong social support provided by Islamic communities, and furthermore to feel jealousy towards other cultures is very un-Islamic. That said, I continue to assert that your arguments are red herrings -- attempts to indirectly answer one question with another's answer. Fixing the issues you brought up are unrelated to removing Islam's influence on the people of the world, unless you feel that Islam's binding influence on large populations is prohibitively restrictive to the point that is an impediment to any social program of any scale on Earth. If that is the case then the natural progression will lead us to war, and many nations around the world have already been lead to this conclusion.
  - hacker42 10y ago
    I think addressing cultural flaws more directly could make such social programs more effective.
    - ihsw 10y ago
      Calling them cultural flaws and saying they need to be addressed is one of the worst first steps you can take, but setting aside that there are already many Muslims integrating into Western society without having directly addressed the those issues. Simply allowing them to participate in Western society is enough to sufficiently "address" those issues, as many will naturally gravitate towards more progressive and liberal lifestyles. I have seen many Muslim women driving, walking outside, and showing their faces without incident, but I think it's important to point out that there are plenty of non-Muslim cultures that punish unmarried women for public displays of affection (including simply being present with a non-relative male).

metaphorm 10y ago

I think that's covered under 2) about Salafism/Wahabism

thesimon 10y ago

>when almost every thought and action is dictated by an old book Compared to the US, where political actions are sorely based on facts and the bible and religion are completely irrelevant. /s It's not really an issue only in Islam, people make a lot of actions because of an even older book - the bible - as well.

_delirium 10y ago

Is there much evidence for the specific choice of religion as a casual factor? Methods of blending a traditionalist religion with modern life seem much more important than which religion you start with. For example, Judaism imposes an extremely strict set of rules that govern almost every conceivable aspect of daily life. And indeed you find that strictly observant Orthodox Jews are mostly unable to function in a modern society; a large percentage of those living in Israel are unemployed and supported by state funds. However a large number of Jews have chosen to be somewhat looser in their adherence to Jewish law, which seems to be the key, rather than Judaism itself being more compatible with modernity.

Retric 10y ago
There is clear evidence that Catholic areas have lower levels of economic growth than Prodestent areas even within same country. So, religion really does impact economic growth. But, I don't think there is hard evidence to brake it down to specific causes within each religious group. PS: While you may disagree with this, there is a lot of research into this topic: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=religion+economic+development&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiKqM7dw7nOAhXGOxQKHfyoARIQgQMIHDAA https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=religion+economic+devel...
- tmsbrg 10y ago
  Correlation vs causation. Does protestantism improve productivity, or did the cultures where productivity is valued highly more easily convert to protestantism?
- maze-le 10y ago
  Do you have any sources for that claim? I would be genuineley interested in the methodology of this research. Its just anecdotal, but here in Germany it is the other way around. The Catholic south is prosperous, whereas the protestant north (east) is poor. I can think of examples where the opposite is true (Belgium) but I highly doubt that there is a casual connection. In Belgium for example the catholic (and more important industrialized) wallonia was very prosperous during the 19th century, in opposition to the more agrarian flanders. Nowdays its flanders that is more prosperous, and the old industrial regions in the south suffer from the effects of deindustrialisation.

abalone 10y ago

Because Christians would never pray a lot, slavishly follow an old book or oppress women?

vixen99 10y ago
And we hear of the appalling results of this almost every day across the world, or have I missed it?
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
Well they did, which is exactly how we know it's all a massively bad idea.

curiousgal 10y ago

>Nobody has time to thrive when they have to prey five times a day Ah huh. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age

wtbob 10y ago
People always point to that, but the Islamic Golden Age was no more Islamic than Bonnie & Clyde's benders were financed by Bonnie & Clyde (rather than the folks whose money they'd stolen from banks). The fruits of the so-called Islamic Golden Age were planted by Classical civilisation, watered and tended by Zoroastrians, Jews & Christians — and harvested by Islam. Indeed, even during the 'Golden Age' many of the great lights were not of Islamic extraction (e.g. al-Khwarizmi, who was from a Zoroastrian family and may have converted out of economic or political expediency). That's not to belittle the contributions of actual Mohammedans (e.g. Avicenna, who really did do more than just repeat his Classical forebears), but on the whole the Islamic Golden Age was what one would expect when a supremely wealthy but weak empire (the Eastern Romans) is conquered by poor but strong barbarians: the conquerors are rich & happy for decades, living off of the wealth they have taken. Like Anglo-Saxons building their mead-halls over Roman mosaics, they enjoyed the products of a higher civilisation but were unable to match them (the Umma being rather larger than the Heptarchy, they had a much bigger base from which to decline, and a correspondingly-longer period of relative comfort).
- mustaflex 10y ago
  "many of the great lights were not of Islamic extraction" ... really? many of them ? can you please write "many" more from "non Islamic extraction" "El-Khwarizmi, who was from a Zoroastrian family and may have converted out of economic or political expediency" ...So one particular scholar is not really a "muslim", soo it must that everything else worthy must be from non-muslim people "but on the whole the Islamic Golden Age was what one would expect when a supremely wealthy but weak empire (the Eastern Romans) is conquered by poor but strong barbarians: the conquerors are rich & happy for decades, living off of the wealth they have taken." ...So they were just plunderers? This is textbook western self-propaganda.

yardie 10y ago

Have you met any Muslims that pray? Do you know anything about it all? 2 of those prayers occur before and after business hours. And even if they were working there's not a whole lot going on at 4:30am. 2 are short coffee break level prayers. A little meditation and a quick baslama and get on with it. And the longest, conveniently occurs around lunchtime anyway. I fail to see how prayer affects anyone's potential in a negative way.

agumonkey 10y ago
And in our times of hectic impatient noisy lives, 5 pauses to reflect, even on "old religious ideas" (I'm fairly biased against religion), isn't a bad thing IMHO.
wookey 10y ago
here at my workplace co-workers go to "pray" once an hour. And by prayer i mean cigarette breaks. These common interruptions are accepted and I watch as it takes minutes on return to get back to speed. those are the ones that reduce productivity. not sure the islam prayer cycle is that corrosive by a long way
avisser 10y ago
Agreed. I work with a devout Muslim. I think I'd more effective if I took meditation breaks as regularly as he takes his short, prayer breaks.
- yardie 10y ago
  My MIL is Muslim. When we are visiting and it's time to pray she finds a quiet corner, unrolls her rug, does her prayer, and is back before the tea has finished steeping. I've spent more time getting to the break room at work than she has on afternoon prayer. So I fail to see the connection between the 2-3 scheduled daily prayer times and production. If that is the case, coffee, cigarettes, lunch, and bathroom breaks are equal contributors.

yodsanklai 10y ago

I don't know about arabic countries and how religion affects their development but I tend to believe your comment isn't accurate. I've known personally a lot of muslims originally from those countries (colleagues, students, classmates, friends...). None of them preys five times a day or are hidden in cloth bags.

lukasm 10y ago

praying is not a problem. The biggest problem is lack of debt. Wanna open a new business? You can't take credit. Problems with cashflow? You can go to a debt prison. Forget about mortgage for a house etc.

7Z7 10y ago
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you. But mortgages exist in lots of Muslim majority countries. Are you really suggesting that Muslims don't take on debt? You can take out a mortgage in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bangladesh, Morocco.. They were the first four I checked.
- mkaziz 10y ago
  GP is referring to the fact that interest is forbidden in Islam. However, you can still get interest-based loans in Muslim countries. They're just branded differently.
  - 7Z7 10y ago
    So GP's point is invalid than, no? Muslims take on debt and business loans regularly.
- lukasm 10y ago
  You can something similar to mortgage or credit in UAE as well, but being late on the payment has devastating consequences. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2194633/Luxury-high-performance-cars-left-abandoned-British-expats-fear-jailed-debts.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2194633/Luxury-high-... It has consequence for enormous part of a life. For example, I was traveling using metro in Dubai. I had 5 dirham on my travel card and the trip I wanted to take costs 3 dirham. I couldn't enter the train, because the maximum charge is 8 dirham, so I could have negative balance.

John23832 10y ago

That's absurd. Everything we do in the modern world stands upon technological, mathematical and scientific success brought to us by the middle east. Don't let you (imo apparently biased) thoughts about islam distort history

agumonkey 10y ago

How long is a prayer in Islam ? it's an interesting idea but it's hard to believe that this has such a significant impact.

mkaziz 10y ago
2-4 minutes. About the length of a standard coffee break
- agumonkey 10y ago
  Alright, the point above is thus irrelevant.

MisterBastahrd 10y ago

Sure, this is the same reason that nobody who smokes cigarettes has ever been successful. All those breaks they take in the middle of the day.

gkfasdfasdf 10y ago

You could not be more wrong. I am a software engineer, and I pray five times a day. My wife is a physician, prays five times a day, and wears the headscarf. If our household income is any indication, we are thriving just fine.

hacker42 10y ago
It is obviously inaccurate to write "nobody" and I am sorry if I have hurt your feelings by this rhetorical device. I've merely pointed out a general tendency that Islam numbs social, economic and scientific progress, i.e. that the influence on the conflicts in the Arab World with regards to religion is not just a matter of differences in beliefs, but rather an underlying condition of a kind of belief which prevents progress. The niqab and burqa, the excessive structuring of day-to-day life, Islamic extremism, as well as oppression of women, gays and atheists are simply symptomatic examples for an overly binding religion. I've also only pointed out that it plays a significant role in the grievances in the Arab World, not that is the only cause.