Compared to the enormous literature on the religion of Islam, very few books have been published about the economic performance of different Islamic nations. The book, The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East, by Timur Kuran, an American Muslim and a leading expert on Islamic economic institutions, is a thought-provoking attempt to analyse the factors responsible for the persistent underdevelopment of Islamic countries in West Asia that include the Arabs, Iran, Turkey and the Balkans.
In the author’s words, the region, “at the start of the third millennium, is widely considered an economic laggard, and plethora of statistics support this consensus”………………………………………..Full Article: Source