Semitic Religions: The First Commercial Multinationals

“The Roman Catholic Church was the world’s first major corporate multinational… It developed the first commercial multinationals, such as the Knights Templar. The East India Company borrowed the structures for systematic control and order from these Christian sources, and modern historians of corporations regard that company as the template for modern multinational governance.” ~ Rajiv Malhotra in his book Indra’s Net 

What Rajiv Malhotra has said about the Roman Catholic Church is also applicable to Islam, which emerged from the deserts of Arabia in the seventh century and in three hundred years founded a multinational empire. In the twenty-first century, the global commercial power of the Roman Catholic Church is driven by American technology and American paper money (the dollar), while the global commercial power of the Islamic empires is driven by Middle Eastern petroleum.