So writers the British administrator Harold Ingrams about the chewing of leaves from the qāt tree in Yemen. Qāt is the Arabic term for Catha edulis, a species of the Celastracae cultivated in the highlands of southwestern Arabia for at least the last six centuries. The leaves of this tree are chewed as a stimulant, producing a feeling of euphoria followed by depression.

Islam is a faith as well as a cultural commitment. Whether Islam also provides a framework of political ideology is still questionable. Some sociologists employ the notion “the politicization of the sacred” to depict this claim. Ideology is a very modern notion that Muslim thinkers have adopted from Western culture. The suggestion of the Moroccan philosopher Lahbabi, at a conference of C.E.R.E.S., that the arabized term “fikrologia” be employed as a substitute for “ideology,” (in Arbaic: al-ideologiyya) nevertheless does not change this situation.

The Iranian economy under the Islamic Republic has been strongly influenced by factors which lie for the most part outside the Iranian government's control, in particular lower oil sales due to the Iraqi attack and to the world-wide oil glut. One should not underestimate, however, the impact of the policies which have traditionally most concerned economists, namely, the government budget and monetary matters. The major thesis of this article is that the Islamic Republic's economy has been heavily influenced by an overvalued exchange rate which has: (a) forced reductions in government development spending; (b) fueled inflation as the government printed money to finance its deficit; (c) worsened the imbalance in foreign trade by encouraging imports and discouraging non-oil exports; (d) subsidized the consumption of imported goods, primarily benefiting the urban population, especially the rich; (e) distorted the allocation of resources in favor of commerce at the expense of production; and (f) benefited well-to-do merchants at the expense of poorer farmers and artisans.

Islam's influence on political values and, as a result on the political behavior of the Muslim state, has traditionally been analyzed in terms of two general categories. These categories were the purely religious and the purely temporal, which in turn identified the interests of theological beliefs and transcendentally fixed ethical duties on the one hand and the interests of ruling dynasties, military and financial affairs on the other. The influence pattern, however, is more complex than the one suggested by the traditional approach.