Ibn Khaldun's Theory of Umran: How can Muslim Countries benefit from his thought in development

Section 2
How con Muslim Countries benefit from Umran Theory

The Current Political and Socio-Economic Climate of Muslim countries:

Although the time of Ibn Khaldun was different from the contemporary times, but most of the Muslim world nowadays, and not just the area he was concerned with at that time, has been unable until now to get rid of what he considered to be the primary cause of the decline of Islamic civilization. Beside the well known current critical political situation in Muslim countries in terms of dictatorship ruling in most of Muslim countries, lack of democracy and human rights, injustice, extensive and widespread conflicts and civil wars between Muslims in one countries as well as between Muslims in different Muslim countries, lack of unity and national sentiment and affiliation or lack of Asabiyyah in the same concept Ibn Khaldun revealed in his doctrine as one of the main cause of dynasty declining, Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) economic overview 2013 shows quite dreadful figures related to OIC countries socio-economic situation which can reviewed as follows:
- Although the 57 OIC countries population in 2012 represents 22.6% of the world total population, they produced only 11.3% of the world total GDP which can be shown in the following chart:



- Despite the high population the low GDP can be justified by the higher unemployment rate that reached 9.9% in 2011 which is the highest in the world as shown in the following right chart, and the lower productivity which is US$12,000 which is again the lowest in the world as shown in the following left chart.



- The distribution of GDP among OIC countries also shows injustice in income distribution as revealed in OIC 2013 report The gap between the rich and the poor OIC countries is substantial. The average per capita GDP based on purchasing power parity (PPP) in the richest member country (Qatar, $102.9K) was 17.1 times higher than the average of the OIC countries ($5.9K) in 2012. Moreover, 18 OIC member countries are currently classified by the World Bank as low-income countries and 32 are middle-income countries (16 lower middle-income and 16 upper middle-income). In contrast, only 7 OIC member countries are classified as high-income countries. The total output (GDP) and trade of the group of the OIC countries are still heavily concentrated in a few of them; in 2012, only 10 member countries accounted for 72.9 per cent of the total GDP, based on purchasing power parity (PPP), of the OIC countries and 76.6 per cent of their total merchandise exports, both measured in current US Dollars, (SESRIC, 2013, p. 35.).

- Inflation rate in OIC countries is also occupies the highest rank in the world which is 7.4% in 2014 as shown in the following chart;



- The Enabling Environment Index (EEI) of OIC countries also is the lowest in the world which obviously states that socio-cultural and socio-economic environment in Muslim countries is not reliable and suffering from injustice, lack of peace, inequality of income distribution, inflation, high taxation rates, lack of governance, and lack of welfare. The following chart shows the OIC EEI comparing to other world countries;


- If we take the education index as an example to the low EEI and also because education, training, and skillfulness are considered in Ibn Khaldun model of growth as crucial and central prerequisite to economic growth, will find that OIC countries are also the lowest in the world as displayed in the following chart;


- Some of OIC countries (particularly in OIC countries that are having huge and diverse of valuable human and natural resources like Sudan, Iraq, Somalia…etc) are suffering from corruption which increases the prices of outputs through payment of bribes, which is, from economic view, reduces the grow of outputs and consequently job creation at the macro level, (On control of corruption index prepared by the World Bank in 2010, which reflects “perceptions of the extent to which public power is exercised for private gain, including both petty and grand forms of corruption, as well as capture" of the state by elites and private interests”, some of the IDB member countries, especially in Gulf region, are doing well, with Qatar on top at 91 (out of 100), followed by UAE, Brunei, Oman, and Kuwait at 67, 78, 80 and 66, respectively. On the least successful in corruption control, Somalia, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Sudan and Iraq stood at 0, 0.9, 1.9, 4.3, and 4.7 respectively. Greater transparency and accountability, simplification of administrative procedures and merit‐ based human resource management in public administration make it possible to curb corruption, (IDB, 2012).
So, from the previous analysis to the current situation of Muslim countries it is quite obvious that the extreme assumptions of Ibn Khaldun that lead to decline of dynasty is clearly applied in Muslim countries nowadays; lack of unity or Asabiyyah, States leaders in Muslim countries struggling for the sake of power and government, high expenditure in war, luxury, high taxation rates, high population with low income and very poor education, very limited division of labor, poverty and less diversification of needs which limited the pattern of consumption in most Muslims countries on the basic needs of life due to poverty and poorness, high rate of unemployment, less labor productivity, very less outputs that already reflected in the lowest GDP in the world.
How OICs rectify this situation by applying Ibn Khaldun Umran model؟ This will be explained in the next part of this section.

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