The Islamicity Foundation’s 2017 Annual Report
Building Effective Institutions for Political, Social and Economic Reform and Progress
1. Executive Summary
The Islamicity Indices are made up of five indices, namely, the Economic (EI), Legal and Governance (LGI), Human and Political Rights (HPRI), International Relations (IRI) and the cumulative Overall (OI). In the 2017 index notable improvements in terms of scores were made by the Dominican Republic (EI), Togo (LGI), Niger (HPRI), Libya (IRI) and Honduras (OI). Syria’s scores declined the most across all the indices.
The self-proclaimed Muslim countries performed lower than the global average on OI relative to 2016. They made significant declines in their scores on EI and IRI. Their average scores on HPRI also declined. While the world average improved, the Muslim average declined. Only on LGI did the Muslim countries improve significantly. However, when looking at the score, it becomes evident that these countries had a much lower average to begin with, which was thus easier to improve upon. Among the Muslim countries, Malaysia had the highest score on EI and OI, the United Arab Emirates on LGI and Albania on HPRI and IRI. At the other end, Yemen had the lowest score on EI, HPRI, and OI, Libya on LGI and Syria on IRI.
The results demonstrate that the majority of the Muslim countries fell in the lower half of the indices. Particularly noteworthy is their concentration in the lowest quartile in terms of both rank and score. Joining them in the two lower quartiles are largely sub-Saharan African and Eastern European countries.
The Islamicity Indices 2017 results are analyzed in greater detail in this report. The findings are followed by developments in the Islamicity Foundation, its Board of Advisors, and in its Board of Directors, followed by details of our Country Partners in the appendix.