The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East

[Gustaf]

It is pretty damn hard to have a modern economy in socieities that ban lending money at interest.

Myth FYI.

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You totally didn´t understand that post, did you?

What is the myth? That you're not allowed to lend money at interest in islamic countries or that you cannot have a modern economy without it?

(of course, what happens with such a prohibition isn't actually that there are no interest payments. It's simply that you run lending in a less efficient and less transparent way)

[Gustaf]

It is pretty damn hard to have a modern economy in socieities that ban lending money at interest.

Myth FYI.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

You totally didn´t understand that post, did you?

Than again, I'm seeing it mostly from a legal/policy point of view than cultural.

Lumping up all Muslims as a single culture (apart from whats directly said in the Quran) is probably a big overgeneralization.

 

Of course you are correct in both posts. But you still, didn´t get that post, did you?

Let´s begin with the obvious: You are an Egyptian Peasant in, oh, the era just after the reign of Muhammed Ali. What is "Modernization"? And why is it good for you?

I don't get it, so I'll just give you an answer:

Modernization is all of your kids surviving into adulthood. It is good for you because you care for your kids.

EDIT: question (completely serious one): is whatever point you're making with this equally applicable to a Swedish peasant in some era like the 13th century?

[Gustaf]

It is pretty damn hard to have a modern economy in socieities that ban lending money at interest.

Myth FYI.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

You totally didn´t understand that post, did you?

Than again, I'm seeing it mostly from a legal/policy point of view than cultural.

Lumping up all Muslims as a single culture (apart from whats directly said in the Quran) is probably a big overgeneralization.

 

Of course you are correct in both posts. But you still, didn´t get that post, did you?

Let´s begin with the obvious: You are an Egyptian Peasant in, oh, the era just after the reign of Muhammed Ali. What is "Modernization"? And why is it good for you?

I don't get it, so I'll just give you an answer:

Modernization is all of your kids surviving into adulthood. It is good for you because you care for your kids.

EDIT: question (completely serious one): is whatever point you're making with this equally applicable to a Swedish peasant in some era like the 13th century?

First to answer your question: yes.

What I´m not arguing is that modernization (however we define it) is ´bad´. What I´m questioning is what exactly 19th Century Egyptian peasants would have thought of as ´modernization´(if indeed they could think about it all - which is highly unlikely). Would they have thought of it in terms of the definition you gave? (obvious blunt answer: no) I think to get this reference you might want to read up on the history of the period in the middle East.

I still don't really get where that takes us.

The way I understand the argument presented in this thread it runs, simplified, somewhat like this:

1. Islamic society (Middleeastern, whatever you want to call it) was bad (I will use bad instead of non-modern, as referring to things I consider objectively bad such as high infant mortality rates)

2. Certain parts of that culture prevented it from becoming less bad and are responsible for those societies remaining more like they were then.

In that context, I don't follow your point. The reason I brought up the Swedish peasant is because Sweden obviously modernized anyway. I don't think anyone thinks that Egyptian peasants consciously kept their society archaic because they got off on making things bad. And I don't think anyone is arguing that they were idiots either. The whole point on islamic law holding back the middle east would presumably be that it prevented people from realizing what gains they could have from changing their society.

[Gustaf]

Ok, now I got your point. My objections would, summarized, be these:

1. The Middle East was behind Europe before there was much imperialism coming their way (say nineteenth century). So presumably you would have to find another explanation for why Europeans could subject them to imperialism and not the other way around.

2. People forget all of the intra-European imperialism that went on. For an Irishman I would have thought this to be an obvious point...Sweden introduced laws in the 15th century which demanded that at least half of officials in the major cities had to be Swedes. To prevent the Germans from taking over. The Germans imposed their religion, their technology and their trade laws on us. The Swedish wars against Denmark was even largely about combating the German influences on Swedish society (such as preserving the traditional freedom of the peasant in Northern Scandinavia). But none of this prevented modernization.

3. In terms of outsiders coming in to destroy your culture, this doesn't really explain why the Middle East is so horribly behind. Most if wasn't colonized, after all, or at least not until pretty late. In fact, the areas that were colonized earlier, like Northern Africa, are a lot better off than those that weren't (like Yemen or Saudi Arabia). Most of the Middle East as we normally think about it was under Ottoman rule until the end of WWI, for instance. East Asia on the other hand has done a lot better, even when you consider areas like India that was colonized well before. And countries that have done well have tended to be the ones opening up to foreign influences in a major way, like Japan in the nineteenth century or China in the last couple of decades. If you were to remove oil from the equation the Middle East is really in horrible, horrible shape. Especially in cultural or non-economic terms, I might add.

[Gustaf]

Lot to say here. I don't have much time right now, so I will fire off a few things:

1. China was one of the world's poorest countries before opening up their economy. And I mean that as in bottom 10 or so, poorer than most African countries. In 1965 they were actually the world's second poorest country, above only Ghana and behind Malawi, Ethiopia, Tanzania and many others. They were rich and powerful once upon a time, yes, but not in modern times.

2. I'd say the Middle East actually is behind, yes. If you ignore the effects of oil, that is. Sub-saharan Africa is also in bad shape, but then again, they have a much stronger case for blaming imperialism.

3. I'm well aware India is not a model society. I still say that it beats Yemen and Saudi Arabia in terms of democratic freedoms and gender equality. And, of course, the issue there is simply that they haven't modernized enough.

4. Your wikiing doesn't really counter my point, imo. Among fashionable radicals in Western Europe it's very popular to field a confused idea about how Western wealth was based on imperialism. My point is basically that the causality goes the other way. The imperialism is based on the wealth. Imperialism in itself was not, by and large, of much long-term material gain for the imperialist nation. (a simple look at the wealth of Western nations proves that colonies was hardly a major factor behind wealth accumulation).

At some point in time, the exact date of which doesn't really matter much, Europe had moved ahead of the rest of the world and could thus subject them to imperialism. I'd argue that the Turks peaked in the 16th century and then lost ground, which coincides well with the Renaissance and all of that.

Not all parts of this modernization might be deemed good by us today, but many of them were undoubtedly good and many of them held the seeds for the future goods that came about.

[Gustaf]

I think I get what you mean, but there are a couple of points I think you're overlooking.

1. You said that modernization and imperialism went hand-in-hand in the ME. But that in itself isn't exogenous, is it? It did so because they didn't modernize "by themselves" (that's an awfully bad term for what I'm getting at, but I think you understand what I mean) the way Western Europe did. Which in itself requires some sort of explanation. Furthermore, as I said, China and even, say, Sweden modernized largely with outside influence that could be called imperialistic and was probably unfair and painful in many ways. But it still happened and it was still good, pretty much for everyone. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find groups of people in China or Sweden that were better off 50 or 500 years ago respectively and to the extent that you can it is very dubious whether they had a reasonable moral claim to it.

2. Actually, that was my only point, I just thought of it as one when I started out. I would like to try and flesh out where we disagree though.

As I understand it we're in some sort of broad agreement that modernization overall in the long run is a pretty good thing. Getting gender equality, democracy, medicines, clean water and so on is laudable. There may be differences of opinion on some stuff but as a general baseline. Then it seems your case is basically that the reason ME didn't modernize wasn't Islam but the re-distributional effects of modernization and the imperialist connotations of it in those countries.

What I lack then is a case for why modernization then still happened in all those other places where imperialism also played a great part and where the effects on farmers, etc were similar (as you said they were in the case of Sweden).

I don't necessarily disagree with you on some of these components, but as I said before I would think that they're partly linked to something particular to these societies. For instance, the reason why modernization had imperialist connotations was to some extent the very fact that they had not modernized on their own and then had to import these ideas. And the successful resistance to modernization seems to mark some sort of difference with respect to say Western Europe or Eastern Asia.