ABSTRACT
The Muslim civilisation may be divided into worlds: the Arab world and the non-Arab Muslim world. The non-Arab Muslim world is larger than the Arab world in terms of population. Authoritarianism appears in almost all of the Muslim republics, although to varying degrees depending upon the country and the time period. A large Muslim population lives in India, where religious confrontations between Muslims, Hindus and Christians occur despite the formal confessional neutrality of the Indian State. Externally, where Muslim countries encounter other civilisations there is often tension and armed conflict. The adherents of Muslim values sometimes argue that modernisation is a Western phenomenon, meaning it should be rejected ipso facto. State involvement, ownership as well as regulation, in the economy has been strong in all Muslim countries. The Muslim countries tend to score low upon the main features of modernity: economic affluence and human rights.
