Thanks, Prabhu, for the history lesson. Perhaps my brief comment was not clear. Please look again at the first two paragraphs. I am not an historian but I am pretty certain that: (1) There was a substantial time gap between the beginnning of Christianity and the beginning of Islam. (2) Unlike the leaders of Christianity, the leaders of Islam attempted to promote their religion and their might in a world where the leaders of another very strong religion had already been successful in doing this. It seems to me that using history to judge whether historical Christianity or historical Islam is more compatible with capitalism may be a fruitless and frustrating exercise. More to the point, I think that to interpret the _facts_ that have been presented on this list so far, much more _theory_ is required. Finally, it seems to me that this is at least part of the message that Jones tried to give about Stark's book. His first comment was that Stark aimed to present a mono-causal explanation of the rise of the west. He also writes in effect that Jones "does not show that religion as a whole is the prime source of economic advantage." Pat Gunning