The puzzle of the Middle East's economic retardation -- Analyzing the economic role of Islam -- Commercial life under … -- The absence of the corporation in Islamic law -- Barriers to the emergence of a Middle Eastern business corporation … absence of Middle Eastern consuls -- Did Islam inhibit economic development? …

Professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University. He is the author of "Islam and Mammon: The Economic Predicaments of Islamism … attitudes or some incompatibility between Islam and capitalism. Rather, starting around the tenth century, Islamic legal … institutions, which had benefitted the Middle Eastern economy in the early centuries of Islam, began to act as a drag on …