Magnitude of Poverty in the Muslim World

The picture portrayed by the statistics of international organisations about poverty and human development places the Muslim world amongst the most backward nations. All reports and studies agree that poverty is dominating in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. If we take the member countries in the Organisation of Islamic Conference [52 countries] as representing the Muslim world, we find that 25 of them are placed amongst the 56 most poverty-stricken countries of Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The following charter shows the position of the member countries of OIC in the ladder of human development which comprises: life expectancy, adult literacy rate, child education, and per capita income.

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX FOR THE MUSLIM WORLD (1992)

*    Statistics of HOI taken from Human Development Report. 1994, UNDP; size of population and per capita income taken from World Development Report, 1994. Average per capita income of Qatar, Bahrain, Syria and Yemen is for 1991 for Somalia 1990, for Libya and Sudan 1988, Lebanon 1987, Iraq 1989, Albania 1986.

**   Rest of information from Europa Publications, The Middle East and North Africa, 1994.

*** Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan attend QIC as observers. Palestine and Zanzibar are members but no information is available.

The above table shows the abundance of poverty and deprivation in the Muslim world. From the first 50 countries that top human development in the world, there is only one Muslim country, Brunei, which is the least populated in the Muslim world. And amongst the 50 countries which bottom the list in human development there are 23 Muslim countries, 11 of them are the least developed in the whole world. Although its data was incomplete for several Muslim countries, the Human Development Report (1994) estimated that there were 285 million persons living in absolute poverty in the countries of OIC, which amounts to 26 percent of the population. Because the data was not complete for al! countries the real picture would be even worse. Therefore, the poverty situation in the Muslim world, especially in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, would continue to be bleak for many years to come. So, what is the remedy Islam offers to the problem of poverty? And what role the institution of zakah may play to alleviate this problem?

Source: Poverty Alleviation in Pakistan: Present Scenario and Future Strategy, Mohibul Haq Sahibzada. Republished with permission.