People in the Muslim Majority Countries: History, Composition, and Issues

This chapter suggests that Islam’s openness to ‘alien’ customs and norms facilitated cultural exchange and symbiosis in the ‘Muslim lands.’ Further, the low-impact political expansion of Islam resulted in social consolidation. These three phenomena seem to be essential in understanding the character and structure of Muslim population in the Muslim majority countries (MMCs), and are discussed in the chapter to conclude that the need for protecting the ‘pasture,’ and an emotional urge for gravitating around the ‘pride’ throughout history have enticed Muslims to settle around kinship and social groups within (or even outside) their traditional habitat. The chapter concludes that, primarily because of the above historical factors, people in the MMCs are likely to be widely different from one another and influence and approach human development differently.