This is a discussion I was having on a religion thread, and the suggestion was made that I post it here to see if what I was saying would fly in an actual economic debate.
My perspective is that culture drives poverty at least as strongly as any other factor. Islamic nations tend to let religion pretty much dominate their culture, so, religion and culture tend to become pretty much the same thing. (Whereas in a christian nation they would be separate, because religion plays a much smaller part in the overall culture)
I think the reason most, if not all, Islamic nations are under-developed is because the culture created by Islam is one that suppresses new ideas and focuses way too much on reverence for the old ways. The people can't organize into social structures that would enable them to build any real infrastructure for themselves, because they'd inevitably deviate from or be seen as criticising some part of the traditional ideologies and offend the religious elite.