This article summarizes research results on a world system perspective on the contemporary crisis. During the 1990s penetration by transnational capital dramatically increased in many parts of Europe (especially in what was described by Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defense, recently as "the new Europe"); in eastern Latin America, in Southern Africa, in Central Asia and in South and Southeast Asia. However, there was a dramatic decrease of MNC penetration in most countries of the Muslim world during the second half of the 1990s. The multinationals withdrew from the region at an unprecedented scale, long before the September 11 attacks. World capital thus withdrew from the Muslim Middle East and went into Eastern Europe, Central Asia, East and South-East Asia, Eastern Latin America and Southern Africa instead. So is Giovanni Arrighi proven right, when he maintains that the ascent of one region conditions the decline of another one? Most probably, yes. Our empirical results over the last years are all the more striking, since we also have to consider that on a world level - contrary to popular assumptions - membership in the Islamic Conference is not an impediment against political democracy and human development, while "Washington Consensus" policies more often than not indeed are. The empirical record speaks a clear language in favor of Islamic democracy and against those in the West that attempt to treat a Muslim cultural heritage as a general development burden. It should be also clear that a reliance on the Washington Consensus will not fix the performance of countries. Our cross-national results also clearly contradict many of the expectations inherent in the writings of Professor Samuel Huntington. 4 development indicators under review here - 2 for the environment, 1 on human development, and 1 on democracy - are even positively and significantly determined by membership in the Islamic Conference, once you properly control for the effects of the other influencing variables. However, gender justice and redistribution remain indeed the "Achilles heel" of today's members in the Islamic Conference, strengthening the cause of those Muslims who advocate more social inclusion and more gender justice, and thus a more adequate contemporary reading of the Holy Scriptures. Needless to say, that the various Christian liberation theologies and liberation theologies from other denominations, which Polanyi's thought in many ways preceded, are working in the same direction. Non-Muslim "Europeans" should remember that the keys of the 'common European house' do not belong to one cultural tradition only. The world of Islam was pivotal to the European path to the Renaissance and to the re-discovery of classic Greek philosophy. Islamic tolerance and knowledge enabled us Europeans to develop. The Muslim world, on the other hand, can gain a lot from a thorough reading of the works of the great social scientist Karl Polanyi, who always thought that morality and the social sphere are above the market principle
