ABSTRACT
In 2019, as a professor in political science at the San Diego State University, Ahmet T. Kuru, published the book Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment: A Global and Historical Comparison. The main point, for Kuru, is that it was not Islam per se that caused the decline of the Muslim world. The decline was primarily a result of the shifts in the class relations, first and foremost through the merging of the two classes on top, the military and religious leaders, and, as a corollary, a deterioration of the previously more independent merchants and the previously more independent scholars. At times, higher officials, particularly in the military, were remunerated through land allotted by the state, not as private property nor as property to be inherited by future generations, but as a right of use for each individual state official – the so-called iqta system.
