- The Muslims make up a quarter of the world's population, but they possess only 6% of the world's wealth.
- Two-thirds of the world's poor who live on less than $2 US a day are Muslims. Moreover, this income is depreciating by 2% annually. This is the greatest depreciation suffered by individuals in the so-called developing world.
- There is not a single Muslim country among the top 30 wealthiest nations.
- Among the 5000 products in the various fields of production with which various countries distinguish themselves, none of them are a point of distinction for any Muslim country.
- Except for oil, caviar, and Persian rugs, the 57 member countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference offer nothing to the international marketplace.
- The debt of the Muslim countries is estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars. The level of self-sufficiency in these countries is in perpetual decline.
- The median life expectancy for the Muslim individual is twenty years shorter than that for an equivalent person in the West. This is due to the disparity in health services, nutrition, and education. We can also add to this the factors of subjugation and repression.
- 40% of educated, young Muslims fail to obtain adequate employment in their own countries. They either remain in their countries without work or they are forced to immigrate to other countries. Moroccans, Tunisians, and Algerians generally immigrate to France. Egyptians and Syrians generally go to America or other places in Europe.
- While in the West, unemployment has varied between 5 and 12% throughout the past two decades, it has been consistently more than 20% in the Muslim world and continues to grow worse.
Muslim graduates and laborers are in desperate need of employment. They are unable to provide homes for themselves. This means that a good number of young Muslim men are unable to marry and establish families for themselves. Many young women never find husbands. In Iran, as many as 40% of the women under twenty will probably never marry. Saudi newspapers a few months ago released similar alarming statistics for Saudi Arabia.
- Lack of sufficient water is a problem facing the entire Muslim world.
- According to a study conducted by the World Health Organization, there is only one Muslim country - Oman - among the 40 countries that provide their citizens with adequate, up-to-date healthcare.
- Politically, the Muslim world exerts only the weakest influence over world events. The door is slammed shut on Muslim countries that aspire to join the company of the world's decision makers. A handful of Western countries make up that exclusive club.
- Of the thirty worst conflicts that rage in the world. 28 of them concern Muslim people or Muslim countries.
- In the past three decades, more than 2.5 million Muslims have been killed in wars within the Muslim world.
- Two-thirds of the world's political prisoners languish in prisons in the Muslim world.
- 80% of the world's refugees are Muslims.
- Every country in the world that has completely collapsed and fallen into utter incapacity is a Muslim country. A good example of such a country is Somalia.
- The Muslim world is the least productive part of the world when it comes to scientific research and technology.
These statistics demonstrate a level of backwardness in the Muslim world in the domains of healthcare, education, economics, and human rights. These issues might have people willing to deal with them, since they are issues faced globally. In these matters, the Muslim world can be compared and contrasted with other countries and regions. What we have mentioned has been of a purely descriptive nature.
However, there are a number of other issues that need to be brought up in order to complete the picture.
I prepared a questionnaire to which hundreds of our young people responded. Its purpose was only to get an idea of the present situation with respect to the moral and religious conduct of our people. It revealed another aspect of our backwardness. It would be a mistake to try to separate this aspect of our backwardness from the former that we have already discussed. To make such a distinction shows a perspective plagued by double standards.
The questions and answers were as follows:
Question: What percentage of the Muslim community prays their prayers in congregation:
Answer: 20%
Question: What percentage prays their prayers at home?
Answer: 20%
Question: What percentage prays occasionally and abandons prayer occasionally?
Answer: 30%
Question: What percentage of Muslims are circumcised?
Answer: 80%
Question: What percentage gets married Islamically?
Answer: 75%
Question: What percentage buries their dead according to Islamic rites?
Answer: 90%
Question: What percentage pays Zakâh?
Answer: This question cannot be easily answered, since Zakâh is not always given openly. Even in the early Islamic era, the state only collected a portion of the Zakâh. Nevertheless, 70% of the respondents opined that no more that 55% of the Muslims pay their Zakâh.
Question: What percentage of Muslims observes the fast of Ramadan?
Answer: 70% This indicates that many Muslim are willing to engage in purely devotional acts of worship but are more neglectful when the worship has a financial aspect to it. This shows a degree of miserliness, selfishness, and love of the world.
There are other factors that are more difficult to assess in detail, like adherence to moral values on the personal level, as well as in relation to others like spouses and parents, society at large, and when dealing with enemies.
-islamtoday.net
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