The Islamicity Foundation’s Third Annual Report on the Islamicity Indices Program
July 2019
1. Executive Summary
The 2019 Islamicity indices again show New Zealand to be the country that best reflects Islamic teachings, values and institutions in the world. Much as in 2018, Sweden, Iceland, Netherlands, and Switzerland complete the top five list of countries that best follow the precepts of Islam as compared to Muslim-majority countries. The practices of Muslim-majority countries underperformed in reflecting the teachings of the Holy Qur’an and hadiths.
In 2019, the world improved its performance along all five indices. The countries of western Europe, North America, and developed Asian countries continued to perform well in the indices. The list of top ten performers has changed little since last year. The results again demonstrate that developed countries with more effective institutions, stronger economies, and higher respect for human rights and the rule of law do well on the indices and follow the precepts of Islam more closely than the Muslim-majority countries.
The Muslim-majority countries mirrored their last year’s trendline. They improved in their overall, economic, legal and governance indices scores and made the biggest jump in their International Relation Islamicity (IRI) Index scores. Their Human and Political Rights Islamicity (HPRI) Index score saw a decline, which was also the case for non-Muslim majority countries. Mirroring their median score performance, the median rank for Muslim-majority countries also improved, only decreasing for HPRI.
Although, the Muslim-majority countries’ median scores increased across most indices, their results were once again lower than the global median across all indices. Historically, the Muslim-majority countries have been responsible for bringing down the global average, but it was the non-Muslim countries that performed worse this year, lowering the global median scores for Overall Islamicity (OI), HPRI, IRI, and Legal and Governance Islamicity (LGI) Indices.
Regionally, Europe had the better performance over the previous year, followed by the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. It is evident that their performance is closely correlated with their income levels. The richer the country, the better its scores and rank in the indices. However, even low-income countries can perform well in some indices as is evident by their high ranking in the IRI index.
To build strong institutions necessary for improving their governance practices and socio-economic progress, Muslim countries should more closely follow the precepts of Islam and teachings of Qur’an and hadiths. Only when these countries adopt effective institutions that embody freedom and are just, economically progressive, respective of human and political rights and in harmony with the international community, will they truly internalize and execute Islamic standards of governance.