Under development has remained a major challenge for the World of Islam throughout the modern ages. In general, the Muslim World has lagged behind the developed world in many social and economic development indicators since the close of 18th century. There are several causes of the underdevelopment of the Muslim World in the modern times. Some of them are exogenous such as oppressive and exploitative colonial rule over large swathes of the territories of the Muslim World in Asia and Africa, the trepidations of the two World Wars, the costs of involvement in the Cold War between the US and the USSR in the twentieth century and the stress and exigencies of the Global War on Terrorism through the first quarter of the twenty-first century. All of them took a very heavy toll on the developmental potential and prospects for the Muslim World in Asia and Africa. Many conflicts and wars simmering in the Muslim World today are direct inheritances of these exogenous pressures brought on the World of Islam by the big powers – and the so-called Super Powers – of the past three centuries.
Alongside these exogenous causes many endogenous factors too have been the causes of the underdevelopment in the Muslim World. Science and rational thinking has been a major factor behind remarkable development in many parts of the world over the past five centuries. For a diverse array of cultural, sociological and political reasons, the Muslim civilization did not espouse rational thought, science and modern technologies on the right time over the past five centuries. The Muslim world was a beacon of scientific research and innovation for humanity through the Mid-to-late Middle Ages. It became increasingly obscurantist and regressive as Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment broke out in the West.
All material achievements in the history of the human civilization have been preceded by intellectual attainments. Scientific and technological prowess follows the train of rational thought and logical intellectual rigors. Culture, politics and religion, all, staggered and regressed in the Muslim World, after the Middle ages, to the points where they stifled the prospects for the evolution and growth of rational thinking and intellectual enlightenment. Technologies that might have spread mass awareness and education, such as the printing press, were not welcomed by either the political or the clerical elite of the Muslim World. They posed a challenge to the established structures of power and patterns of cultural and social thoughts. Any ideas or technological innovations that could potentially cause a shift in the power equation within the autocratic, obscurantist and tribal-feudal power equation of the Muslim societies were vigorously and, often, violently opposed by the power elite of the Muslim World over the past five centuries.
Resistance to rational thought and modern science was a short-sighted and self-defeating attitude of the elite of the Muslim world. It led to serious reverses for the Muslim world in the great power competitions of the post-Medieval international order. It led to the falling of the large parts of the Muslim World, as an easy prey, to more than three centuries of European colonial rule. At the grassroots, and higher up the societal ladder, the Muslim world suffered from a spread of mass religious superstitions and fanaticism during this time.
The European colonial rule in the Muslim societies, in general, supported and encouraged some of the very conservative, obscurantist and reactionary elements of the times. They also revived and resucitated the organically dying feudal-tribal and autocratic structures of power in the Muslim World. This trend has continued throughout the twentieth and twenty first century. Even today, the developed world defined, determined and sustained structures of international order is seldom friendly to asertive progressivism in the Muslim societies. More often than not the developed world of the twenty-first century ultimately supports and backs some of the most reactionary, misgoverning and anti-development forces, structures and systems in the Muslim World of our times. This has mostly been the case with the political dispensations and Economic and Cultural structures of power across the Musim World from Morrocco in North Africa, the Sub-Saharan Africa, the Arab World, the Central Asia, the South Asia and on to the South East Asia.
Today, behind many badly governed states, autocracies, fundamentalist movements and violent and extremist outfits in the Muslim World, one clearly sees the backing of the developed world support and direct or indirect assisstance.
The progressives of the Muslim World have not only got to work out a new cultural, social, political and governance revival based on Science, reason and fair play in their societies; they also have to resist and defeat the transnational backers and abettors of reaction, obscurantism, crime and violence in thier homes. Only through such educated, informed and organized struggle can we rescue the societies of the Muslim world from underdevelopment, obscurantism, misgovernance and violence.
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Why is the Muslim World Under- Developed?
