Book Review: The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East? by Timur Kuran

Book Review: The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East? by Timur Kuran Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2011

Reviewed by Zubair Abbasi, DPhil Law Candidate, Oxford University

The economic descent of Muslim world since post medieval period and its continuous underdevelopment is one of the most puzzling questions of world history. Although the rise and fall of nations is a recurring theme in human history, yet a hibernation stretching over half a millennium is unprecedented. Some historians are of the view that it is not that the Muslim world declined rather it is Europe, which surpassed rest of the world. The rise of Japan in the early 20^th century and the economic ascent of China and India in recent years indicate that other nations of the world are equally capable of making progress and competing with the Western world.

There have been various explanations for the continuous economic stagnation of the Muslim world in general and that of the Middle East in specific. It is pointed out that its geographical location made the Middle East vulnerable to military attacks from various sides. This problem was exacerbated by plagues and famines that reduced a large number of population during the 14^th and 15^th centuries. This was followed by the change of routs of international trade that eclipsed the commercial centers of the Middle East during the 16^th and 17^th centuries. A combination of these physical factors did not allow commerce and industry to flourish. Consequently, scientific and technological revolution could not take place and thus the Middle East was left behind in economic prosperity and political ascendancy. These explanations were challenged by some scholars who focused upon the role of human beliefs and attitudes in responding to challenges posed by the change of circumstances. The popular explanation in the West has been based on culture whereby Islam is regarded as the primary cause of underdevelopment. This explanation is endorsed by the fact that unlike Christianity, Islam did not went through the process of reformation. This appears to be a logical corollary of Weberian thesis that places the Protestant Ethics at the heart of the rise of the West.

In this context, an important contribution of Kuran’s The Long Divergence is that it offers an alternative and startling explanation of the decline of Muslims. He identifies certain features of Islamic law that proved economically inefficient. His argument is: first and foremost, the egalitarian Islamic law of inheritance discouraged accumulation of wealth by dividing wealth amongst the members of family. The permissibility of polygamy exacerbated this problem as it caused fragmentation of the wealth of a rich merchant who had several wives and many children. As the merchant class and nobility could not accumulate enough wealth, they failed to gather sufficient strength to pressurize the political elites for pro commerce policies. Therefore, the rulers remained authoritarian and anti-mercantilist. Some other aspects of Islamic law also contributed to the problem. For instance, the law of contract and partnership remained simple. The alternative to the corporation under Islamic law—waqf—was ineffective to respond to changing commercial needs. Although the law against interest was avoided through legal stratagems, such devices imposed their own costs and consequently deprived the commerce from the primary engine of growth—credit finance. The prohibition of apostasy not only discouraged Muslims from criticizing the Islamic legal institutions, it also made it impossible for Muslim merchants to use non-Muslim legal system for conducting their businesses.

Professor Kuran’s ideas have attracted a lot of intellectual attention since he started his work on Islamic law and development in the mid 1990s. This book presents an epitome of research stretching over a period of one and a half decade. The book is also unique as it is a systematic analysis of the issue of the decline of Muslims by a Muslim scholar based and educated in the top American universities. The traditional explanation of the downfall of Muslims by the majority of Muslim scholars has been offered in a religious paradigm. It provides that dictators and foreign occupiers are punishment from God for the sins of people. Professor Kuran, for the first time, attempts to establish a causal relationship between Islamic law and economic development. However, this is exactly where his analysis is found deficient. Professor Kuran assumes the religious nature of Islamic law as the primary cause of its being static though he challenges the popular notion of the closure of the gates of Ijtihad. If Islamic law was receptive to change, then why did it not adopt itself by borrowing modern ideas as happened later in the second half of the 19^th century? This is especially true with respect to Islamic commercial law, which is not entirely based on the Quran and the tradition of the Prophet (peace be upon him).

Kuran’s answer to this question is that although Islamic law did not remain frozen in time, yet it did not change to an extent to support scale and scope of economic activity. However, it is important to note that in the absence of an economy of scale and scope how could Islamic law have transformed itself? The underlying assumption in Kuran’s thesis is that it is the law that leads towards development. Western experience, however, shows that it is the other way round. It was the commercial activity, which made its way against the rigid common law and the skeptic state.

Kuran rightly compares the Middle Eastern experience with that of the West, which overcame the religious prohibition of interest and the clerical anti-science attitude. But why did the Middle East fail to overcome its hurdles towards development? Can this question be answered within a single paradigm of Islamic law? Kuran defends the accuracy of his approach by arguing that he has traced down the causes of the problem at the root level rather than looking towards the symptoms at the top. He argues that historians have done enough research while explaining the role of state in keeping the Middle East backward. Such an approach, according to him, is inappropriate. However, his own approach ignores the social and political structure of the society entirely. Thus we find Islamic law as all pervasive and the sole binding force in society.

Kuran acknowledges the qanun (imperial decrees) and custom as important sources of law within the Islamic legal system, however, he does not explore their relationship with the legal texts of Fiqh. Why did Islamic law not develop a mechanism to curb the powers of ruling authorities? Why did the merchant class not pool resources through commercial networks and devise mechanism to get rid of simple partnership rules? Whether the corporation is a cause or effect of economic development? Was there actual demand for big businesses in pre-nineteenth century Middle East? Why did the private sector remain small and stagnant while the public sector showed remarkable development in the Ottoman Empire? Why was there no public-private partnership in Muslim states? What is the relationship between economic practice and commercial law?

These are only a few out of myriads of questions, which cannot be answered in a uni-causal paradigm of law offered by Professor Kuran. However, he has successfully generated an important debate about Islamic law and development. This will definitely prompt other scholars and researchers to systematically explore this issue, which remains an undiscovered territory by Muslim intelligentsia for a considerable period of time.