Abstract
Today, approximately one fourth of the world’s population is part of the expanding Islamic Ummah (1,634 million people). Muslims are found in large numbers in all regions of the world but are concentrated most heavily in Africa and Asia. Muslims also constitute sizeable minority populations in Europe as well as in North and South America and, to a lesser extent, Oceania. Despite the obvious wealth of some Islamic financial centers and oil-exporting countries of West Asia, most Muslims live under conditions of poverty, joblessness, illiteracy, ill health, social and political unrest and, in some regions, religious extremism. This chapter reports a 45-year time series analysis of the nature, extent, and pace of social progress that is taking place within 53 of the 57 member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Data are reported at four levels of analysis (country specific, subregion, region, and for the OIC-as-a-group). Comparisons also are made between the development changes that are taking place within the OIC countries and those occurring in the world-as-a-whole. The chapter also considers the contribution of the “Arab Spring” that began in December, 2010 in promoting the emergence of more participatory political systems in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa--the so-called MENA region. The findings reported present a sometimes bleak portrait of the current state of social development in many OIC countries but, as often, offers a generally optimistic picture of the positive social and economic changes that are taking place in many of the group’s socially least developed countries of Sub-Saharan Africa.
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Notes
- 1.
Ummah is an Arabic word meaning “nation” or “community”. It is distinguished from Sha’b (Arabic: شعب) which means a nation with common ancestry or geography. Thus, it can be said to be a supra-national community with a common history” (Wikipedia 2014a). At the time of the Prophet the concept of the Ummah included not only followers of Islam but all members of the larger community-- Christians, Jews, non-believers, and others—all of whom had direct access to the Prophet. Over the centuries, however, the meaning of Ummah became narrower and, today, refers only to the worldwide community of Muslims.
- 2.
The term “Muslim” should not be confused with the Arabic term “Moslem” that was used in earlier centuries to designate the followers of Islam. The latter term has taken on a pejorative meaning and is no longer used to refer to the followers of Islam. The terms should not be used interchangeably.
- 3.
“Adequacy of social provision” refers to the changing capacity of governments to provide for the basic social, material, and other needs of the people living within their borders, e.g., for food, clothing, shelter, and access to at least basic health, education, and social services (Estes 1988: 199–209).
- 4.
For methodological reasons, the ISP’s 41 indicators are divided between positive and negative indicators of social progress. On the Education Subindex, for example, higher adult illiteracy rates are negatively associated with social progress whereas gains in primary school enrollment levels are positively associated with overall improvements in development. Thus, not only is the ISP representative of all major sectors of development, the instrument also achieves balance with respect the range of positive and negative factors that are used to assess changes in social progress over time.
- 5.
A fuller description of these procedures is summarized in Estes (1988), pp. 199–209.
- 6.
Four member states of the OIC were excluded from the analysis due to missing or incomplete data.
- 7.
This taxonomy groups countries into four clusters by overall level of socio-economic development: (1) Developed Market Economies (DMEs) consisting primarily of economically advanced countries (plus selected middle income countries added to the Organizations of Economic Cooperation and Development) on the basis of their current level of economic development; (2) the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) consisting entirely of successor states to the former Soviet Union; (3) Developing Countries (DCs) consisting primarily of low, middle and high income countries located in developing Africa, Asia, and Latin America; and (3) Least Developed Countries (LDCs) which, for a variety of historical and socio-political reasons, often experience net negative patterns of development from one time period to another.
- 8.
The average scores for each of the WISP’s ten subindexes was set at 10.0; thus, the theoretical range of WISP scores is 0.0–100.0, albeit owing to some unusual conditions operating in selected countries, some nations achieved scores that fell outside the theoretical range.
- 9.
The MDC is organized around the attainment of eight goals (MDGs) by 2015 that are central to meeting at least the basic needs of the world’s poorest nations: (1) eradicating extreme poverty and hunger; (2) achieve universal primary education; (3) promote gender equality; (4) reduce infant mortality; (5) improve maternal health; (6) combatting HIV/AIDS and other diseases; (7) ensure environmental sustainability; and, (8) promoting global partnerships (UN 2012a, b).
- 10.
Referred to as the Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance, the eight member states of this organization were: Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union. The Warsaw Pact ceased to exist following the collapse of the Soviet Union in December, 1991.
- 11.
LDCs and SLDCs consist of the world’s poorest and slowest developing countries. The majority of these countries have been identified by the United Nations as “least developing” (LDCs) but they also include other low-income and politically unstable societies that are at risk of social, economic or political collapse.
- 12.
The unemployment figures reported here reflect different time periods and, therefore, may not fully reflect the full employment-unemployment picture for all countries at the same point in time (ILO 2012).
- 13.
Gini coefficients range from 0 to 100 with the highest levels of income inequality at the higher ends of the scale.
- 14.
The ten OIC member states identified as either “failed” or “failing” states are identified in column 5 of Table 5.
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Estes, R.J., Tiliouine, H. (2016). Social Progress in Islamic Societies: Achievements and Challenges. In: Tiliouine, H., Estes, R. (eds) The State of Social Progress of Islamic Societies. International Handbooks of Quality-of-Life. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24774-8_4
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