A Muslim Davos

Asim Siddiqui, guardian.co.uk

This week saw the meeting of the World Islamic Economic Forum (WIEF), the equivalent of the Muslim world's Davos, held this year in Jakarta. In attendance were heads of states and senior government figures from across the Muslim world, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco, UAE and Qatar, with delegates from 38 countries.

The purpose of the WIEF is to increase trade and business activity among Muslim countries and beyond. I had the privilege of chairing one of the sessions. Fazil Irwan, director at the WIEF Foundation explained to me that WIEF's central pillar is to develop itself as a networking conduit between the Muslim and non-Muslim world, as they believe business collaboration can generate greater prosperity and mutual understanding. Established in 2004, WIEF gives particular focus on investing in women and the young; understandable given the high levels of unemployment among these two categories in Muslim countries.

The Muslim world's economic performance is generally dire. Despite making up one-fifth of the world's population, it produces a measly 7% of its output. Much of the discussion at the WIEF revolved around the global economic meltdown and its impact on Muslim countries that are now facing economic contraction, job losses and greater poverty due to the reckless model of unfettered market liberalism. With the interconnectivity that comes with globalisation, no state is immune. The systemic failure of the current banking model has generated much more official interest in Islamic finance. Shariah-compliant finance is based on financing secured against underlying tangible assets and involves risk-sharing between the parties in the pursuit of genuine commercial activities, rather than profiteering from paper instruments whose trail often led back to highly leveraged low-quality debt (better known now as toxic debt). There was a widespread view among those attending (including non-Muslims) that Islamic finance could provide one possible way out of the current malaise and become an important foundation in a new, more stable world economic order.

One official pointed out that it is not the labeling of products as "Islamic" that is the solution, as it is perfectly possible for a shariah-compliant bank to create sophisticated financial products that end up mirroring the conventional system. What is needed is ethical standards for the financial system based on transparent risk assessments and controlled debt levels. Whether such a model of greater fairness and integrity should be necessarily labelled with the exclusive term "Islamic" is a separate debate. Gordon Brown yesterday, in his speech to Congress, spoke in similar terms when he said that "markets should be free but never values-free, that the risks people take should never be separated from the responsibilities they meet".

The conference showed the efforts the Muslim world is making to help pull the world out of recession. Indonesia itself is home to the world's largest Muslim population, the third largest democracy and the fourth largest population, at 230 million. It is also a member of the G20. Its stable democracy and impressive economic growth over the last decade has marked Indonesia out as a front-line state in the west's greater desire for a more respectful engagement with the Muslim world after the Bush years.

Indonesia is seen as a possible template of how to deal with Muslim democracies and markets, new and old. In her recent visit to Jakarta in February, Hillary Clinton asked colleagues whether Indonesia held lessons for Pakistan, a state with the sixth largest population but far less stable. Given the different role Islam plays in Pakistani and Javanese culture and public life it is not immediately clear what those lessons might be. Indonesia is also strategically important given its commanding presence over the narrow Strait of Malacca, through which supertankers transport Middle Eastern oil to the Pacific Rim. There is great excitement here that President Obama may choose Jakarta to deliver his promised address to the Muslim world from a Muslim capital, the home of his childhood school.

The way out of the current economic crisis will require innovative thinking and a meeting of minds. The WIEF provides one such forum.

What Do Muslim Women Want?

An excerpt from the book Who Speaks for Islam? by John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed

In sharp contrast to the popular image of silent submissiveness, Gallup findings on women in countries that are predominantly Muslim or have sizable Muslim populations hardly show that they have been conditioned to accept second-class status. Majorities of women in virtually every country we surveyed say that women deserve the same legal rights as men, to vote without influence from family members, to work at any job they are qualified for, and even to serve in the highest levels of government. In Saudi Arabia, for example, where as of this writing, women were not allowed to vote or drive, majorities of women say that women should be able to drive a car by themselves (61%), vote without influence (69%), and work at any job for which they are qualified (76%). Egyptian women, who have faced far fewer restrictions than their Saudi counterparts, speak even more strongly in favor of women's rights, with 88% of Egyptian women saying that they should be allowed to work at any job for which they are qualified. In Egypt, as in other parts of the Muslim world, this attitude is not just a theory, as a full third of professional and technical workers in Egypt are women, on par with Turkey and South Korea.

If you want to put faces to these data, observe women such as Souad Saleh, an assertive and outspoken woman whose area of expertise is fiqh, or Islamic jurisprudence. Saleh is an Islamic jurist and professor at al-Azhar University, the most prominent institution of Islamic scholarship and authority in Sunni Islam. She was the first woman dean of faculty at the institution and is a prolific writer on issues ranging from family law to women's rights, authoring more than seven volumes on Islam and at least four in-depth research works. A regular on pan-Arab television and one of the most outspoken preachers on Islam, her message is clear: "Islam is simple and holds women in high esteem."

Celebrity preachers aren't the only ones who defy conventional wisdom. There are also women like Salwa Riffat, an Egyptian woman now in her late 50s who earned her bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering from Cairo University and went on to earn her Ph.D. in civil engineering. At the same time, she managed to successfully balance raising a family and fulfilling the demands of her career. She is now a professor of engineering, teaching men and women alike. "Women of my generation were at the forefront of a new era in Egypt," she says, referring to the wave of women attending college that gained momentum in the 1950s and 1960s. "Now, it's hardly something worth noting that in Egypt, universities are filled with women, in some cases more than men, and they are excelling." The valedictorians of Cairo's elite medical school are famously known to almost always be female.

These cases are hardly unique. Nationally representative self reported data show percentages of women in Iran (52%), Egypt (34%), Saudi Arabia (32%), and Lebanon (37%) with postsecondary educations. In the United Arab Emirates and Iran, women make up the majority of university students. However, in Muslim countries -- as well as in non-Muslim countries -- Gallup finds a wide range of female education with percentages of women pursuing postsecondary educations dipping as low as 8% and 13% in Morocco and Pakistan, respectively, which is comparable with 4% in Brazil, or 11% in the Czech Republic.

Based on the largest and most in-depth study of its kind, Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think presents the remarkable findings of the Gallup Poll of the Muslim World, the first ever data-based analysis of the points of view of more than 90% of the global Muslim community, spanning more than 35 nations. Lean more Who Speaks For Islam?: What a Billion Muslims Really Think