CAIRO

A wise visitor from outer space who dropped in on Earth a millennium ago might have assumed that the Americas would eventually be colonized not by primitive Europeans but by the more advanced Arab civilization  and that as a result we Americans would all be speaking Arabic today.

Yet after about 1200, the Middle East took a long break: it stagnated economically, and today it is marked by high levels of illiteracy and autocracy. So as the region erupts in protests seeking democracy, a basic question arises: What took so long? And, a politically incorrect question: Could the reason for the Middle East’s backwardness be Islam?

The sociologist Max Weber and other scholars have argued that Islam is inherently a poor foundation for capitalism, and some have pointed in particular to Islamic qualms about paying interest on loans.

But that doesn’t seem right. Other experts note that Islam in some ways is more pro-business than other major religions. The Prophet Muhammad was a successful merchant and much more sympathetic to the wealthy than Jesus was. And the Middle East was a global center of culture and commerce in, say, the 12th century: if Islam stifles business now, why didn’t it then?