Why Islam Makes You Stupid . . . But Also Means You'll Conquer The World by Edward Dutton

Author:Edward Dutton [Dutton, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Washington Summit Publishers
Published: 2020-02-02T05:00:00+00:00

Zakat—Charity

Observant Muslims, especially the majority Sunni, must give one fortieth of their savings to the needy. This is believed to create social solidarity among the Muslim community and reduce tension between the rich and the poor. Socioeconomic status is around 70 percent genetic across generations,183 it is robustly correlated with intelligence, and intelligence is strongly genetic. Thus, such a practice is simply helping those with low intelligence to pass on their genes and so reducing the intelligence of Muslim societies. On the other hand, this has to be balanced with the likely fact that it will reduce social tension and criminality, thus potentially reducing stress, and allowing the economy to work more efficiently. So, there does not appear to be a particularly persuasive case for arguing that Zakat reduces intelligence, though it is possible that it may do overall.

It is, however, likely to boost levels of ethnocentrism, by virtue of elevating a sense of solidarity, a sense of everyone being the same. We have already observed Farmer and his colleagues’ finding that we associate similarity to self with trust.184 If socioeconomic differences within a society are substantial, there is a tendency for people not to perceive those whose lifestyles are very different as part of their in-group. The very poor are often regarded with feelings of disgust; people react to them similarly to the way in which they react to images of people with skin diseases185 while the very wealthy are often regarded with contempt and envy.186 Zakat at least has the potential to reduce this problem.

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