Kiriakou's Pakistan-Islam economic critique
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John Kiriakou has offered what he calls a controversial opinion: that Islam has held Pakistan back economically. He notes that Pakistan and South Korea had the same GDP in 1964, and that Pakistan has vast textile manufacturing producing much of the world's clothing at a fraction of Western production costs, yet the two countries' economic trajectories have diverged sharply since.

Prayer breaks, holy days, and the heat

Kiriakou says he personally witnessed the productivity cost: Pakistani factories must shut down five times a day for prayer, observe holy days roughly every other day, and halt work again during the hottest part of the afternoon, when workers go home to sleep. He contrasts this with South Korea, which in the same period built out cars, planes, cell phones, televisions, and kitchen appliances to become one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

Partition and nuclear spending

Kiriakou says Pakistan remains resentful over the 1947 partition and its lingering tensions with India, and argues the country has spent money on nuclear weapons programs that could instead have gone toward infrastructure and education.

See also

- John Kiriakou
