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A comment on Why do we work so hard?. Parent comment

Re:Why do we work so hard? by cbeach on Sunday March 13, 2016 @11:15AM (#11277951)
That "balance" doesn't seem to be contributing much to the economies of Muslim-majority countries, and their living standards, though, does it?

Except for those nations sitting on abundant oil reserves, the Muslim world is chaotic, unproductive and has terrible human rights / freedom of expression.

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Re:Why do we work so hard? by sshumaker on Sunday March 13, 2016 @12:03PM (#11278113)
You have to be very careful to tease out correlation from causation here. In the Middle Ages the Islamic world was significantly ahead of the West in these regards. For a bunch of historical reasons (ineffectiveness of Ottoman Empire for several hundred years, World War I) most of the Islamic world is indeed behind first-world countries.

But that's also like blaming Christianity for the problems in Central America or Central Africa. Religion is only a small factor.

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