Why are Muslims So Poor? (How Did Islam Go From Running the World to Poverty?)

In this video, Al and Simone tackle a difficult historical question: Why did once-wealthy Muslim empires decline into poverty? They discuss misconceptions about the economic downfall and explore the historical context, including the wealth and advancements of Muslim empires around the year 1000. They also cover various socio-economic factors such as inheritance laws, usury laws, colonialism, and the alliance between religious and political authorities. The episode delves into specific challenges facing Muslim-majority countries compared to the historical context and also includes a discussion on modern Muslim income levels in the U.S. and the impact of governance and religious practices. The video concludes with thoughts about potential reforms and the importance of adapting religious interpretations to today's technological and socio-economic realities.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] HEllo Simone. Today we are going to be asking a question and I really do not know how to word this. Um, Why

are Muslims so poor?

don't you get a job? If you're so hungry, why don't you get a job? Get a goddamn job, Al. You got a negative attitude.

Speaker: That's what's stopping you. You gotta get your act together.

Malcolm Collins: But somebody may, may look at this and be like, that's a silly question. You know, obviously Muslim regions of the world were never wealthy and colonialism and the Muslims are coming from poor countries and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, except none of those things actually explain the question at hand because.

In fact, at the year 1000, the Muslim empires were probably, by a pretty easy margin, the wealthiest place in the world. They [00:01:00] made up 10 percent of global GDP. Baghdad had between half a million and a million inhabitants around the year 1000. So that was larger than any city in Western Europe. And then what about Western Europe?

Well, the largest city in Western Europe at the time was actually an Islamic city. Cordoba. Which is in present day Spain, which had around half a million people living in it. Wow. They also were so O. P. In the sciences. You know, not just like inventing irrigation or more modern irrigation algebra modern medicine but they were so op in the sciences that western european authors when they would write in the sciences would write under fake islamic name So that people would take their work seriously,

Simone Collins: nice

Malcolm Collins: Which I just find absolutely hilarious.

And so for some of these old texts, we don't actually know if they were written by European scholars or Islamic scholars because all the European scholars had to write under Muslim [00:02:00] names because everyone just knew it like Muslim science better. And well, and this is where you get, you know, the owl prefix, that's algebras alchemy, which is basically chemistry of that period.

But, and if you're like, oh, colonialism, but by the 1700s, the Islamic world share of the GDP had dropped from 10 percent to just 2. 2%, and that was well before the era of colonialism.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: So you can't blame this on colonialism something happened in between the year 1, 000 and the year 17, 000, which turned Islam from the global superpower cultural group, both in terms of technological output and in terms of economic output to a backwater.

And some individuals might say, well, but, but, but, you know. The European tradition is based on a much older you know, like they, they, they go, can go all the way back to classical Greece and [00:03:00] they just have an older tradition to draw from. Right. Or, or they could argue that well, Christianity maybe has an older tradition to draw from, but.

The problem , is that the Muslim world happens to have grown out of, where? Mesopotamia and Egypt! Much older traditions to draw from! Oh dear. You have the Persian Empire, which was, in many ways, significantly more advanced than the Greek Empire. I mean, that's what makes the Greco Persian wars for me, the most interesting period in history is you have this conflict that it's this existential conflict between two regions that are superpowers in totally unique and different ways.

Right. And, and it, it, it plays out so well. It's like a, a RPG where You know, like when, okay, when Starcraft came out in terms of like resource management, RPGs, that was like the first time I really remember playing one of those were like the different races that you could play as actually had like totally unique units to them.

And [00:04:00] in most of the other periods in history, when you're looking at wars or something like that, it is broadly similar units against broadly similar units. But when you go to the Greco Persian war, you are dealing with. Totally different civilizational structures and totally different, it's like it's different as the Terran and the Protoss, like, it, it is, it is, it is fascinating to me that this ever happened in human history and we can get to relive this and I might do other lectures on that.

So it is a meaningful effing question to ask. All right. But. I will point something out to start which might go against what some individuals say. So if you're looking within the United States, first of all Muslims, when you're talking about poverty levels do fall into poverty levels at slightly higher rates than other groups.

Specifically, 33 percent of American Muslims have a total household income of under 30, 000. That is compared to 12 percent of Jews, 20 percent of Catholics. 21 percent was in white evangelicals. So it is higher than those groups. But that [00:05:00] said overall, Muslims, at least within the United States are largely a middle class group.

So I will go over some other statistics from. The, the core reason that they're actually lower income in the United States is because a few things. One, they are on average younger with 35 percent between 18 and 29 compared to 21 percent of the general population. And younger people tend to have lower incomes.

They are largely immigrants. Many Muslims are recent immigrants, which can impact lower incomes. And among American Muslims, black Muslims in particular report lower incomes with 41 percent earning lower than 30, 000 annually. And again, this isn't because black people intrinsically earn less.

Uh, We will do another video on why black people in the U. S. earn less that is really interesting and might subvert some of your expectations around this.

Because I don't want to give away too many spoilers, but the stats are actually really interesting if you go in there with a non woke but also non biased perspective.

And then it all [00:06:00] sort of falls into place and it sort of paints the wokies as the primary bad guys and why the African American income is so low. But Education Muslim educational attainment in the United States is similar to other American groups. And the 2007 Pew research found that Muslim American income levels generally mirrored the general public.

So, for example, 14 percent of Muslims reported a household income of 100, 000 or more compared to 16 percent of the overall U. S. 40 percent of Muslim Americans reported family incomes between 30 and 100, 000 compared to 48 percent of the general public. And Yeah, so just generally speaking, and the survey actually says, quote, Muslim Americans have a general.

So not only are Muslims generally around the average American income, a little lower because you'd expect it because they're young and mostly immigrants so in the United States Muslims are generally comparable with the rest of the population, which again, is going to bring us to a more pointed question. Why then? Are [00:07:00] Muslim majority countries so low