Kevin Barrett
The Muslim world has suffered severe relative decline over the past three centuries. From the 16th to 18th centuries CE (10th to 12th Islamic centuries) Muslim peoples represented 25% to 30% of global GDP. By around 1800 CE (1200 hijri) that share had precipitously declined to less than 5%.
What caused Muslim economies to implode? European imperialism. The European Christian world conquered, subjugated, robbed, and exploited the Muslim world (and the rest of the non-western world as well). Since then, the global political and economic orders have been dominated by the west, which has used its power to keep Muslim peoples subjugated, divided, and impoverished.
But change is coming. The west’s relative political, technological, and economic power is declining, while the rest of the world—including the Muslim world—is catching up.
Politically, the west-dominated geopolitical order (with the zionist-occupied US empire at the top) is transitioning to a multipolar order of genuinely sovereign great powers and semi-sovereign regional powers. How will Muslim polities fare during and after the transition?
The answer depends on whether the Muslim Ummah can work together as a civilizational bloc to defend its interests and values, or it continues to fall prey to the divide-and-conquer tactics of its enemies. If unity prevails, the Islamic world could return to its long-time role as the “middle civilization” prevailing in the heartland of the “world island” (Mackinder) of Eurasia and Africa.
Paul Craig Roberts, the former Treasury Department official credited with formulating US President Ronald Reagan’s economic policy, recently argued that Muslim nations are facing an unprecedented opportunity to “seize the day” and take control of their own destinies. Roberts argues that Islamic Iran’s defeat of the US and Israel, the Turkiye-Pakistan-Saudi “Mecca Defense Alliance,” and the possibility, floated by Turkish officials, that Iran might join that security alliance, have revolutionary implications:
These developments, if real and not just words, signal the end of any pretense of American hegemony and Israel’s agenda of Greater Israel. Israel’s population of 10 million of which only 7.8 million are Jews is dwarfed by 448,700,000 Muslims. Moreover, the protection offered by the alliance would likely result in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen joining and the end of warfare stirred up by Washington among Muslims. Syria itself could be reconstituted, and Israel could be forced to give back enough of Palestine for a two-state solution to be possible. Such an opportunity for Muslims has not existed for centuries and the possibility is so extraordinary that it seems likely to pass by due to stupidity, incompetence, and petty bickering. But if the opportunity is seized, the world has changed.
As of this writing in late October 2026, it seems unlikely that the Makkah Defense Alliance will live up to Roberts’ billing any time soon. The main fault lies with Riyadh. The Saudis have made no move to lift their brutal blockade of Yemen and recognize Ansar-Allah as Yemen’s legitimate government—necessary steps for Muslim unity.
On the contrary, Bin Salman has escalated his war on Yemen, suffered severe retaliation, and gone crying to his Makkah Alliance partners, the US, Egypt, and even the genocidal zionist entity for help.
The Saudis’ ill-fated exacerbation of their catastrophic war on Yemen comes at a moment when Trump and his master Netanyahu are said to be contemplating renewed kinetic war on Iran. If that happens, the Saudis will suffer even worse damage, and the world will lose an even larger portion of its energy supply.
Ultimately, the Saudis could lose the provinces of Asir, Jizan, and Najran to Yemen, which has long cited its historical claim to them. In a worst case scenario, the Saudis could suffer catastrophic damage from Iranian and Yemeni strikes not only on their oil installations, but also their life-support infrastructure including water and electricity. (If the US and Israel strike Iran’s infrastructure, Iran will retaliate in kind against neighboring countries that have enabled the war, including Saudi Arabia.)
The smart move for the Saudis would be to make peace with Yemen and Iran and start developing a new regional security architecture that will replace the US globo-cop after Iran finishes chasing it out of the region. That would require completely ejecting the US military from the kingdom. But Riyadh has gotten used to living on unearned wealth under the protection of Uncle Scam.
“Saudi” Arabia was created by British imperialists to divide-and-conquer the region and the Muslim world. Its leaders seem unable to think outside of that box. Perhaps they understand that when they lose their US protection, they will also lose their ability to misappropriate oil wealth. So they are clinging to the old order as long as they can, and may not let go until it is forcibly dislodged from their grip.
The divided-and-conquered Gulf states will be in no position to thrive in the emerging multipolar world unless they dampen their rivalries and work productively together—and with surrounding regional powers including Iran, Turkiye, and Egypt, and ultimately the whole Muslim world. All of these countries need to recognize that the number one security threat in the region, and indeed the world, is the genocidal so-called state of Israel, which is waging an endless war of aggression against West Asia.
The head of one of Israel’s most prominent think tanks, Maj. Gen. Tamir Hayman, has described Israel’s new security doctrine as one that requires endless war—and rejects the independent existence of Arab states. Hayman admits that the zionist entity is planning nonstop wars of aggression aimed at seizing ever-more territory from its neighbors.
The zionists’ ultimate goal is the Biblical “Greater Israel” from the Nile to the Euphrates. They intend to use that territory as a springboard to global domination.
Obviously all of West Asia, and the larger Islamic world, needs to unify to defend itself against zionist aggression. The Saudis, Qataris (who were attacked by Israel in September 2025 despite US promises of protection), Emiratis, Kuwaitis, and Omanis need to recognize that Iran has been right all along in citing the zionists as the main regional threat, and the US empire as an untrustworthy protector at best, a partner in zionist crimes at worst.
In the coming multipolar world, the US will have pulled out of West Asia, and the rabidly genocidal zionists will be hoping to rush in to fill the vacuum and become a regional hegemon with greatly expanded borders. Were the zionists to succeed, the people and elites of West Asia, including the Gulf statelets, would be plundered and subjugated. The zionists would impose an even worse form of dependency than has existed heretofore under US regional domination.
To achieve strategic autonomy, and the prosperity it makes possible, the Gulf countries, West Asia in general, and the whole Muslim world need to coordinate their economies and militaries, and direct the collective weight of their power against the zionists. The Makkah accords between Turkiye, Pakistan, and the Saudis will be a problem, not a solution, as long as those countries—beginning with the Saudis—fail to recognize that Israel and its captive USA are their enemies, while Iran is their ally.
Coordination with Russia and China should be seen as tactical rather than strategic. Those two great powers are leading the push for a multipolar world, and the Muslim world, oppressed by Zio-American unilateralism, shares their interest in multipolarity.
But Moscow and Beijing have their own interests, which sometimes will conflict with those of their Muslim neighbors. If the Muslim-majority countries remain divided, the problems they faced in the unipolar US-led world could re-emerge, in different guises, in the multipolar era.
So the Muslim world ought to take advantage of the zionist threat to unite against it. Once the Saudis and the other Gulf statelets have either awakened or been eliminated, Tehran has been brought on board, and the Makkah Accord becomes a genuine Muslim security alliance, all of the world’s 50+ Muslim-majority countries ought to join—and institute a common market and a common commodity-based currency, presumably based on the traditional dinar and dirham. That would give the Muslim world the economic power it has lacked, and the military power to defend it.
By joining together, the world’s Muslim-majority countries could thrive in the coming multipolar world. But they will need to rise to the challenge posed by rabidly expansionist zionism, band together in self-defense, and then turn those emergency mechanisms of cooperation into a permanent architecture of security and prosperity.
