Is really "Islam" to blame for many of the ills of the world, like stagnation, gender inequality, social inequality, human rights violations and ecologically unsustainable development? In this book, the authors will present a Barro-type of cross-national development accounting framework for the weight that the variable "Muslims per total population" has in comparison to standard world economic openness, political geography and political history indicators for 17 key economic, political, social and environmental variables in 134 countries. This is a 'first of its kind' to develop a quantitative assessment of the "global Lisbon process" of the convergence or divergence of living conditions across the globe since the 1990's. The authors draw come optimistic, socio-liberal conclusions about Islam in the world system while we show, at the same time, that membership in the EU-15, by comparative standards, has dire long-term consequences in the world economy, and globalization does not fulfill many of its promises.
