Impoverishment in the Muslim World: A Consideration of the Legal Causes and Solutions
Abdulqadir Ibrahim Abikan Esq.
Postgraduate Student
Ahmad Ibrahim Kulliyyah of Laws, International Islamic University, Malaysia
ABSTRACT
The Muslim world today, no doubt, occupies the upper echelon in the hierarchy of the poor nations and communities in the global village. This position has remained for some time despite the abundant presence of natural and human resources in these nations. In fact poverty is becoming pandemic in the Muslim world that the few nations yet to be infected would almost jettison the Islamic brotherhood to avoid being completely weighed down too. It is a situation of a wealthy man amidst twenty five poor relations who is not better than being poor. A number of factors, economic, socio-cultural, literacy, political, are responsible for this state of affairs. However this paper contends that a cementing factor, which is always overlooked, is the legal factor which if effectively tackled, is capable of containing other factors and turning the fortune of the Muslim world around. The procedure adopted in this paper was to first delineate the scope of the resources in the Muslim world. The paper then examined how the laws operated and adopted by some nations of the Muslim world have strengthened the various individual factors contributory to the poverty level of these nations, and cemented the factors together to become an almost an insurmountable problem. References are made to the laws of some Muslim countries and United Nations regimes with emphasis on Nigerian laws. The paper concludes by proffering legal solutions to the problems.