This article is prompted by the book The Long Divergence. How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East by Timur Kuran . He credits religious pan-tribalism, until the early Middle Ages common to the Occident and the Orient , to the continuous relative underdevelopment of the Middle East. In the Western world that form of governance has since subsided. It gave way to growing statehood through the concomitant secularization of civic affairs. Consequently, by the 18th century, the Occident had accumulated critical international business and legal experience enabling it to advance various corporate law based market instruments. They put the Occident at the forefront of global modernization, as we see it now. The article argues that , generally, in terms of the United Nations Security Sector Reform and, particularly, transnational organized criminal law and related issues, the Islamic countries in the Orient are harmonizing their approaches to security, in line with the United Nations law.
