“I went to the West and saw Islam, but no Muslims;
I got back to the East and saw Muslims, but no Islam.”
(Mohammad Abduh)
Our Mission
Our mission is to stimulate peaceful and meaningful reforms in Muslim countries by encouraging effective institutions.
Islamicity Indices substantiate Mohammad Abduh’s observation that Western countries better reflect most Islamic institutions than do countries that profess Islam and they provide the compass for renewal and progress in Muslim countries by adopting effective institutions recommended in Islam.
Islamicity Indices enable Muslims to focus on the indisputable source of their religion—the Qur’an—and are a continuous performance indicator of their rulers, governments, communities and of themselves. The Indices also provide a simple approach to explain Islam to the non-Muslim world. With a better understanding of Islam in both Muslim and non-Muslim communities, international relations will be improved.
Islamicity Foundation
The “Islamicity Foundation” was incorporated in 2018 as a non-profit 501 (c) (3) tax- exempt corporation in the United States with Hossein Askari, Hossein Mohammadkhan and Fara Abbas as its Directors. The Foundation has taken ownership of the Islamicity Indices project with the mission of supporting peaceful and positive change in Muslim countries. To this end, the Foundation is developing the organizational structure that is supported by a global community of Muslims who better understand the teachings of the Qur’an and support peaceful reforms and more effective institutions. Such an informed and joined global community of Muslims would be in a stronger position than Muslims in a single country to peacefully encourage rulers to build effective institutions and to initiate much-needed reforms to enhance freedom, representative governance and human and economic development across all Muslim countries.
The Foundation will publicize the program, monitor developments along each dimension of the indices, issue reports based the latest indices focusing on the state of Muslim countries and on areas of progress and shortfall . The Foundation will oversee the updating of the Islamicity Indices, which have been done yearly up to 2023 but will be done every five years beginning in 2025. Among other initiatives, the Foundation plans in the future to oversee the further development and expansion of the Islamicity website to a new platform to allow interactive capabilities for a connected global network and hopes to eventually initiate a Fellows Program. To achieve its mission, the Foundation hopes to raise a significant endowment to generate a sufficient income stream. Although the Islamicity Foundation has been organized as a stand-alone entity, in time and if appropriate, it could partner with a world-class university. This would afford the Foundation and its mission more visibility; it would facilitate fundraising activities; and by teaching seminars on Islam and development and on Islamicity Indices, the Foundation could develop a cadre of young collaborators to better accomplish its mission around the world. Please click here for a Program Summary.
About Us
Our founding members were an economist (Hossein Askari), a finance specialist (Hossein Mohammadkhan), an International Affairs specialist (Fara Abbas), a specialist in Islamic Finance (Liza Mydin) and a web specialist (Mostafa Omidi). In 2024, we are three individuals (Hossein Mohammadkhan, Hossein Askari and Mostafa Omidi) acting in our private capacity to encourage reform in Muslim countries and to reduce political tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims around the world.
We feel that soon after Prophet Mohammad’s death Islam came under the control of rulers and clerics. This has continued throughout history to the point where today we see clerics, rulers, politicians, terrorists, institutions, organizations and individuals espousing a religion that bears very little resemblance to the teachings of the Qur’an. In most Muslim countries, the people have little say about the governance of their country and are prohibited from discussing and discovering their religion. Rulers and clerics have placed themselves as the only legitimate interpreters of Islam and routinely dismiss questions from Muslims as ill-informed and not worthy of discussion. Such a disconnect between the teachings of the Qur’an and its practice has emboldened radicals, opportunists and terrorists to fill the void and to preach a version of Islam that has perverted the religion, divided humanity, pitted Muslim against Muslim, Muslims against Christians, Muslims against Jews and is destroying the fellowship of humankind that is at the core of all religions of the Book. We address this disconnect between the teachings of the Qur’an and the practice of Islam in the Muslim World. Our approach is to establish a benchmark (a collection of rules), based on the Qur’an and the life of the Prophet Mohammad, which Muslims can use to assess the governance and policies of their countries to establish effective institutions.
