A Critique of Robert Spencer’s Views Regarding Dhimmis and Jizya

The following research paper is an academic and historical study of Robert  Spencer’s views about Dhimmis and Jizya. According to Robert Spencer, dhimmis are treated like ‘guilty’ people and subjected to biased and stringent conditions. Furthermore, he believes that there is an entire system of regulations that institutionalize an inferior status for non-Muslims in Islamic law. This paper is an academic effort, aiming to prove that Islam does not treat non-Muslim citizens as inferior and second class citizens nor imposes unbearably rigorous taxes on them. It consists of two parts: the first deals with Robert Spencer’s views regarding Dhimmis and the second part takes into account his views about Jizya. In this connection, all his views and allegations have been taken into consideration and an attempt has been made to absolve Islam of such groundless allegations.

What influences the decision to opt for entrepreneurship?

This thesis develops a preliminary profile for entrepreneurs in order to determine which factors influence the decision to opt for entrepreneurship, and whether they vary across selected countries. The model takes perceptual factors into account, in addition to the traditional demographic variables which dominate the literature. A pooled dataset of 69 countries - surveyed in 2010 and 2011 by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) — is utilized, with similar sets of economies classified as being either factor-driven, efficiency—driven or innovation—driven. The data is analyzed in several stages: first, a probit model is run on the entire dataset, referred to as the “global sample". Then, similar results are estimated on a sample consisting of observations from Pakistani respondents only, referred to as the "Pakistan sub-sample", and Bangladeshi respondents only , referred to as the “Bangladesh sub-sample". The results are also extended to the grouping of factor- driven economies - which are at similar stages of economic development — referred to as the "factor-driven sub-sample“. A comparative table juxtaposes choices concerning entrepreneurship in Pakistan, neighboring Bangladesh, factor-driven economies and the world in general. The results indicate that, globally, there is a quadratic (non-linear) relationship between age and entrepreneurial inclination, women are on average less likely to pursue entrepreneurship than men, and individuals who are already doing paid work are likelier candidates to turn entrepreneur. Among the perceptual variables, three variables — opportunity awareness. personally knowing an entrepreneur, and self-confidence in one‘s own knowledge, skills and abilities — increase the likelihood of a person turning entrepreneur, whereas the fear of failure reduces this probability. By comparison, for Pakistan, factors like age and gender have less importance, whereas perceptual variables like personally knowing an entrepreneur and self-confidence are correlated with the decision to pursue entrepreneurship