In early August, when leaders of several dozen Muslim countries gathered in Jakarta for an annual economic conference, some of the speakers acknowledged that things aren’t looking good for their global community. Chaos continues to grip their heartland in the Middle East, they noted, and anti-Muslim politicians are drawing unprecedented support in Europe, the United States and elsewhere.
When Indonesian President Joko Widodo spoke, however, the World Islamic Economic Forum’s host offered a bracing dose of optimism.
Citing data from a landmark 2015 Pew study showing that the number of Muslims worldwide is expected to grow by 73 percent from 2010 to 2050, the head of the world’s most-populous Muslim-majority nation told his counterparts that their countries must seek to leverage their “fundamental strength”: a huge and expanding youth population. [...]
The “youth bulge,” seen when infant mortality drops while fertility rates remain high, can indeed boost economies by increasing the number of people available to work, experts agree. But it also can lead to social instability if the masses of working-age youths are unable to find productive jobs. [...]
When young people lack economic opportunities and the prospect of being able to support families of their own, experts say, they are especially susceptible to the lure of anti-establishment ideology. In Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, when countries in the region were experiencing youth bulges, that draw was often Marxism, Assaad noted. But it could take the form of austere varieties of Islam for disgruntled Muslim youths today.
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