Poverty in Muslim Countries: Policy Recommendations Over The Gulf Cooperation Council (original) (raw)

Poverty has no religion. Religion can however motivate its followers to eradicate poverty. Islam has such systems of Qard al-Hasan and Zakat to address and eradicate poverty. Muslims are 20% of the global population of approximately 7 billion people. 600 million people across the globe live in extreme poverty. Extreme poverty has been defined under the United Nations definition of multi-dimensional poverty to include hunger, onaccessibility to healthcare, shelter and other most basic human needs for survival. 50% of the World’s poorest people live in the Islamic World. Every 1 in 5 Muslims lives in extreme poverty. The Muslim countries hold 70% of the world’s natural resources that includes, oil, natural gas, gold, copper etc. Most of the Islamic countries have agriculture as part of their economic outputs. Countries like Turkey, Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia, alaysia and Bangladesh produce large quantities of food staples that are exported around the world. The Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) has 53 Muslim majority countries as its members out of its total membership of 57 countries. 25 members of OIC from Sub-Sahara Africa are amongst the most poverty stricken countries in the world. OIC agendas for eradication of poverty from the Islamic world are at best opaque. Internal strives and Arab-Non Arab partisan political strives has paralysed the OIC. OIC’s role as the epresentative body of the Islamic World diminished with the assassination of its leading architects such King Faisal, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Edi Ameen and Qaddafi.