Deconstructing IslamoCapitalism

Mustafa Akyol writes, on a conservative e-zine, TCS, that Islam can embrace Capitalism. First he acknowledges that fundamentalist Muslims hate Capitalism as un-Islamic but claims they are wrong. Let’s consider his claim:

Claim: Mohammad was a “successful merchant.”
Fact: That was before he was a Muslim. After inventing the religion and rising to power in Medina, he eschewed productive activities (Medina was a farming community) and turned to robbing caravans, plundering productive tribes in Medina (he ethnically cleansed Medina of Jews), and conquering Arabia.

Claim: Muslims had never had any trouble with making money and engaged in trade.
Fact: Who doesn’t? The question is: how? Mohammad did it by plunder. The initial Islamic conquests weren’t to convert the infidel but to plunder, dominate, and exploit. As for the vaulted trade-routes: what was traded? Islam invented the intercontinental race-based slave trade plundering Africa, Eastern Europe and India for slaves.

Claim: Muslims had markets.
Fact: Everyone did! Go anywhere in the impoverished world and you’ll find markets where people bring their goods for sale. Of course, as Hernando DeSoto shows, in The Mystery of Capital, it takes more than informal markets to make Capitalism. It takes the rule of law, property deeds and property liquidity, lending with interest, etc. Islamic societies have been autocratic--exemplified by the rule of men and granting of privilege.

Claim: Mohammad was not a socialist.
Fact: He was a fascist. Let’s not split hairs.

Claim: “Instead of carrying heavy and easily-stolen gold, medieval Muslim traders used paper checks.”
Observation: So did the Weimar government. That was the problem.

Claim: “So central was trade to Muslim civilization that its very decline may be attributed to changes in the pattern of global trade. When Vasco de Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope …”
Interpretation: Muslims were necessary middle men when they couldn't be avoided but they produce nothing and can’t compete when alternatives exist.

Claim: “If things had not gone wrong, the business-friendly character of Islam could have well put it into the historical place of Calvinism, which, as Max Weber persuasively argued, spearheaded the rise of capitalism.”
Fact: They author answers it himself: “Weber himself wouldn't have agreed with this comment -- he saw Islam as a religion of conquerors and plunderers, not hard-working laborers. Islam was an obstacle to capitalist development because it could foster only aggressive militancy (jihad) or contemplative austerity.”

Claim: Turkey proves the point.
Fact: Turkey proves that Ataturk’s instinct to suppress Islam was correct.

Claim: “The richest are the oil-rich Arab nations, most of which, despite their petro-dollars, remain socially pre-modern and tribal. Regrettably, oil brings wealth, but it does not modernize.”
Fact: That is because the roots of Capitalism are individual rights, not merely markets, nor mere wealth, nor fortune. But this is an unknown ideal, as Ayn Rand noted 40 years ago, for most people who remain on the superficial level.