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A study by Scheherazade S Rehman and Hossein Askari from George Washington University, published in the Global Economy Journal Vol 10 drew surprising conclusions. The study examined if policies of Muslim countries (or Muslim majority countries) were founded on Islamic principles in comparison to non-Muslim countries. 208 countries were studied. The criteria: economic opportunity, economic freedom, corruption, financial systems and human rights were used to measure the level of 'Islamicity' (based on an information website about Islam and Muslims). The study found that most Islamic countries did not conduct themselves according to Islamic principles concerning economic, financial, political, legal, social and governance issues.

If there was a word that kept popping out at me this entire year, it was 'obliviousness'. It just felt to me that so many people spent 2011 being completely oblivious to what was happening around them. Whether it was Middle Eastern dictators who refused to understand why their people were taking to the streets, to Wall Street bankers who kept awarding themselves humongous bonuses even after their banks had gone bankrupt and people had lost their homes, to the politicians who refused to connect all the many floods and other extreme weather to climate change, so many people at the pinnacles of power remained oblivious to changes going on in the world.