Why is the Islamic world socioeconomically underdeveloped? When we compare Muslim-majority countries not only with Western countries but also with the rest of the world in terms of Gross National Income per capita, they rank below average, despite their substantial oil revenues. The same is true when it comes to life expectancy, years of schooling, and literacy rate. What is more, of fifty Muslim-majority countries, none is a liberal democracy, and only a few of them are categorized as electoral democracies, compared to roughly half of all other countries worldwide.
But to raise the question of why this is the case in educated circles in the West is almost taboo, as I discovered this when I was working on a book on the topic. At the time, a colleague in my department suggested I get it published in Turkish and Arabic, but not English; he was concerned that the book would fuel Islamophobia. The book, Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment, appeared in 2019 in English and has since been translated into fifteen languages; it has been received differently in the West and in Muslim-majority countries. While Western scholars have accused me of Orientalism and Eurocentrism, editions published in Turkey, Bosnia, Lebanon, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia have been well received as an overdue analysis of the problems in these societies.