Uncannily, the Muslim ethos prefers prosperity through exploitation rather than production. Its performance has been, as it were, anti-industrial. Its most advanced country, para-European and modernized by the great Kemal Ataturk, has not built industries much beyond electronic/home appliances, textiles, small ship building. Not all the petro-dollars the Islamic countries have gathered, especially since 1973, have inspired them to industrialize. The early centuries witnessed continual conquest and the new territories lent surpluses for Islam to flourish. Then there were downs and the ups were based on the exploitation of new territories and of nature like petroleum in the 20th century and after. 

Even in India, never did a sultanate involve itself in the development of any kind of manufactured products. Believed to be an economic golden age, the farming surpluses of the Moghul period were spent on architecture, on jewels or on personal luxuries. There was never an economic vision. Today, look at Pakistan and Bangladesh, where are industries? Religion has been the relentless preoccupation of the Islamic civilization. And it forbids the charging of interest and the employment of womenfolk beyond the confines of the home and hearth. Read on and see what an American Muslim scholar has to say....