------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW --------------
Published by EH.NET (June 2008)

M. Umer Chapra, _Muslim Civilization: The Causes of Decline and the 
Need for Reform_. Leicestershire, UK: The Islamic Foundation, 2008. 
xxii + 225 pp. ?13 (paperback), ISBN: 978-0-86037-4619.

Review for EH.NET by Jared Rubin, Department of Economics, California 
State University, Fullerton


M. Umer Chapra's _Muslim Civilization: The Causes of Decline and the 
Need for Reform_ is a daring attempt at reconciling Islamic economics 
with modern economic theory. Though it fails in many respects, it 
represents a necessary step in the advancement of Islamic economics 
(a "field" quite eloquently deconstructed in Timur Kuran's _Islam and 
Mammon_, a book which is inexplicably not cited by Chapra).

The introduction presents the problems that Chapra attempts to 
tackle. These are, namely, "Why has the Islamic world declined 
economically over the last seven centuries after such a brilliant 
rise in its first few centuries?" "Did Islam play a positive role in 
the early rise of the Muslims?" "Did it play a role in the decline?" 
"How can we use the lessons of the past to help shape the future?"

To answer these questions, Chapra employs the framework of the 
fourteenth century philosopher/historian Ibn Khaldun. In Chapter one, 
Chapra explains the essence of this framework, which is circular in 
nature. It suggests that a functioning government is needed to uphold 
Shara (Islamic law), a functioning government can only be sustained 
by its people, who are sustained by wealth, which is attained by 
development, which is attained by justice, which is the 
responsibility of the government. What is needed in this model to 
describe the rise or fall of a society is a "trigger mechanism" -- to 
Ibn Khaldun, Islamic societies began to decline with the failure of 
the political authority.

Chapter two employs this model to account for the rise of the 
Muslims, suggesting that Islam acted as a "trigger mechanism" which 
helped develop early Muslim society. It did so by replacing tribal 
ties with broader religious ties and an associated (political and 
legal) institutional structure. While Chapra undoubtedly exaggerates 
the degree to which Islamic ideals were followed, he rightly places 
the advent of Islam as crucial in the build-up of Middle Eastern 
institutions. Chapter three employs Ibn Khaldun's methodology to 
address factors responsible for the "decline" of Muslim civilization. 
Chapra implicitly admits his agenda in the first paragraph of this 
chapter, providing the specious argument that (p. 45): "given the 
upward push that Islam provided to these societies, there would be 
little justification in blaming it for their later decline." He 
attempts to substantiate this claim by deconstructing Timur Kuran's 
argument that certain aspects of Islamic law (the inheritance system, 
the lack of a concept of limited liability and legal personhood, and 
the waqf) inhibited development in the Islamic world. The 
deconstruction largely fails -- Chapra does not adequately counter 
Kuran's claim that the Islamic inheritance system inhibited the 
creation of long-lasting partnerships, and he oddly claims that it 
was democratic governments in the West that promoted property rights 
and encouraged the corporation (both of which existed before 
democracy). Like Ibn Khaldun, Chapra ascribes the oncoming of 
political illegitimacy as the "trigger mechanism" which precipitated 
the decline.

Chapter four discusses the economic decline of the Islamic world. 
Here, Chapra furthers his thesis that political illegitimacy was the 
root cause of underdevelopment, citing a general overindulgence in 
military campaigns, unjust taxation, and other detrimental economic 
policies. Chapter five analyzes the decline in education, science, 
and technology, all of which were vibrant in the first few centuries 
of Islam. As in his discussion on the economic decline, Chapra links 
the stagnation of education, science, and technology to lack of 
political support. This is a very useful chapter, as Chapra provides 
a nice discussion of the philosophical debates that were a result of 
and resulted in the decline.

Chapter six discusses "social decline," claiming that political 
discord drove Muslims away from the Shari'a. Chapters seven and eight 
attempt to derive lessons from the Islamic historical experience. 
Harkening back to Ibn Khaldun's circular theory of development, 
Chapra notes that the initial "spark" which started the 
"self-reinforcing" process of decline was the political authority's 
neglecting of responsibility. This leads to the conclusion that: 1) 
development is dependent on the accountability of rulers to the 
people, 2) the lack of political accountability gives rise to 
numerous ills, and 3) Islam itself is not to blame for Muslim decline.

Chapra concludes with a call for reform. This includes a series of 
vague suggestions (at least, in the sense that few realistic 
suggestions are made for implementation), such as moral reform, 
proliferation of education, and political reform. His ultimate 
suggestion is that democracy and democratic institutions within an 
Islamic context are what is needed in order to reform the Islamic 
world.

Beyond the fact that Chapra fails to confront many salient 
alternative hypotheses for the "rise and decline of Muslim 
civilization," his analysis is unconvincing on two fronts. For one, 
his account of the "decline of Muslim civilization," based on the 
corruptibility of certain early Islamic leaders, too easily excuses 
institutions fundamental to Islam from culpability. Not only does 
Chapra overemphasize the glory of the four "rightly guided caliphs" 
who reigned for the first thirty years after Muhammad's death -- 
three of whom were assassinated -- but he denies that the subsequent 
"illegitimate" leaders could have emerged from the perverse 
incentives established by the newly founded Islamic political 
structure. Indeed, Chapra does not even address this as a 
possibility. This is where Chapra may have best benefited by 
including more recent advances in economic and institutional history 
into his framework. While he quite honorably cites Douglass North, 
there is no attempt to either deny or incorporate North's framework. 
More importantly, Chapra fails to consider other "big question" 
answers such as those of David Landes, Eric Jones, Kenneth Pomeranz, 
Jared Diamond, and Avner Greif (the latter being an especially 
curious omission given Chapra's frequent use of the term 
'self-reinforcing' in attempting to explain the extended stagnation 
of the Islamic world).

The other aspect of Chapra's analysis which I find untenable is that 
the recommendations he derives for "reform" are largely devoid of 
institutional context and instead rely too much on Muslims everywhere 
acting like the ideal-type homo islamicus. This problem is the same 
one Kuran confronts in Islam and Mammon (p. x): "There are several 
reasons why Islamic economics has largely been spared the sort of 
critical analysis to which the typical economic doctrine or program 
is subjected routinely. The most basic is that its prescriptions are 
considered too unrealistic to threaten prevailing economic 
structures. Another is that evaluating an economic doctrine grounded 
in Islam requires familiarity with economic theory, Islamic history, 
and the contemporary Islamic world -- realms of analysis that rarely 
intersect." Take, for example, Chapra's suggestion on how to bring 
political reform in a region where political illegitimacy is 
well-entrenched. Eschewing the fact that Chapra never really defines 
legitimate political authority (besides reverting to the idealized 
notion of the early caliphs), his answer is not implementable (or at 
the very least, incomplete) given the institutional context -- he 
best strategy for political reform is, therefore, political and 
non-violent struggle, even though this may appear time consuming" (p. 
172-173). How is this implemented? For Chapra, it is through the 
establishment of democratic governments, which should arise because 
"the international environment is now unfriendly towards illegitimate 
governments" and "globalization is also acting as a check on despotic 
governments, two dubious claims given recent experiences in (amongst 
others) Saddam's Iraq, Suharto's Indonesia, and the Myanmar junta. He 
never suggests how democratic institutions can arise within the 
broader institutional context. Indeed, can democratic governments and 
Shari'a co-exist? Chapra assumes so without providing any evidence or 
even an argument for why democratic governments could arise in this 
setting. This passage is indicative of Chapra's style, where pleasing 
yet non-implementable suggestions are proposed (most of which come to 
fruition when all Muslims abide by certain Islamic tenets).

But these deficiencies should not take away from the primary advance 
that this book makes in the field of Islamic economics -- at the very 
least, it attempts to reconcile this agenda-driven field with 
"Western" economic thought. A quick look at the reference list 
reflects this, as Chapra cites the likes of Kenneth Arrow, Benjamin 
Friedman, Douglass North, and Robert Solow. The significance of this 
attempt at reconciliation with economic theory should not be 
trivialized -- indeed, the lack of such attempts in previous Islamist 
tracts provides the basis for Kuran's criticisms of the field. Thus, 
while Chapra's book is not likely to be of much use to economists 
studying the "rise of the West" or the relative "stagnation of the 
Islamic world," it provides a nice building block for future attempts 
at providing a practical, context-driven theory of the "rise and 
fall" of the Islamic world within an Islamist framework.


Jared Rubin is an assistant professor of economics at California 
State University, Fullerton. He recently completed his Ph.D. at 
Stanford University, where his dissertation analyzed the 
institutional forces underlying the emergence and persistence of 
interest restrictions in Islam and Christianity. His current working 
papers include "Social Insurance, Commitment, and the Origin of Law: 
An Economic Theory of the Emergence of Interest Bans," "Printing and 
Interest Restrictions in Islam and Christianity: An Economic Theory 
of Inhibitive Law Persistence," and "Interest Bans, Impersonal 
Exchange, and Endogenous Institutional Change in Islam and 
Christianity."

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