When Bernard Lewis writes about Islam and the Middle East - and especially when Dr. Lewis writes in Foreign Affairs - people take notice, and with good reason. History has shown us that that is the wisest course of action, for Professor Lewis is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Emeritus, at Princeton for good reason: he knows more than anyone else in the West regarding this region, and his insights always prove illuminating. Thus, when he wrote “Free At Last: The Arab World in the Twenty-First Century” in this month’s Foreign Affairs, several points jumped out.
Noting the abject failure of the Arab and Islamic states to make their way into the 21st century, even as China is leaping across centuries to make its presence known in the modern world, Dr. Lewis writes that over the last quarter of a century, real GDP per capita has fallen throughout the Arab world. In 1999, the GDP of all the Arab countries combined stood at $531.2 billion, less than that of Spain. Today, the non-oil exports of the entire Arab world (which has a population of approximately 300 million people) amounts to less than those of Finland (a country of only five million inhabitants). Throughout the 1990’s, exports from the region, 70 per cent of which are oil or oil-related products, grew at a rate of 1.5 per cent, far below the average global rate of six per cent.
The number of books translated every year into Arabic in the entire Arab world is one fifth the number translated into Greek in Greece. And the number of books - both those in their original language and those translated - published per million people in the Arab world is very low compared with the figures for the other regions. Sub-Sahara Africa has a lower figure, but just barely.
The situation regarding science and technology is as bad or worse. A striking example is the number of patents registered in the United States between 1980 and 2000: From Saudi Arabia, there were 171; from Egypt, 77; from Kuwait, 52; from the United Arab Emirates, 32; from Syria, 20 and from Jordan15--- compared to 16,328 from South Korea and 7,652 from Israel. Or of six world regions, that comprising the Middle East and North Africa, received the lowest freedom ratings from Freedom House. The Arab countries also have the highest illiteracy rates and one of the lowest numbers of active research scientists with frequently cited articles. Only sub-Sahara Africa has a lower average standard of living.
Another shock came in the 2003 publication of China of a list of the 500 best universities in the world. The list did not include a single one of the more than 200 universities in the Arab countries.
It is not as if there is not the wealth in the Arab/Islamic world to change these things, for clearly there is and there has been huge wealth generated from the region’s oil and nat-gas. But just as clearly, that wealth does not make its way down from either the autocrats who rule S. Arabia, the Emirates, Dubai and Bahrain, nor from the dictators that rule Libya, Egypt, Syria, nor from the religious authorities that rule Iran (a Persian rather than an Arab nation; but an Islamic nation nonetheless). Shame, then, upon the autocrats and dictators who’ve kept their people in the literal Dark Ages, when the rest of the world is leaping into the modern world with abandon. Once the very centre of academic studies… once the region that gave us algebra and astronomy… once the region of great literature and philosophy… the Middle East has become the region of ignorance, un-and-mislearning; of poverty; of dictatorship; of misrule.
Noting the abject failure of the Arab and Islamic states to make their way into the 21st century, even as China is leaping across centuries to make its presence known in the modern world, Dr. Lewis writes that over the last quarter of a century, real GDP per capita has fallen throughout the Arab world. In 1999, the GDP of all the Arab countries combined stood at $531.2 billion, less than that of Spain. Today, the non-oil exports of the entire Arab world (which has a population of approximately 300 million people) amounts to less than those of Finland (a country of only five million inhabitants). Throughout the 1990’s, exports from the region, 70 per cent of which are oil or oil-related products, grew at a rate of 1.5 per cent, far below the average global rate of six per cent.
The number of books translated every year into Arabic in the entire Arab world is one fifth the number translated into Greek in Greece. And the number of books - both those in their original language and those translated - published per million people in the Arab world is very low compared with the figures for the other regions. Sub-Sahara Africa has a lower figure, but just barely.
The situation regarding science and technology is as bad or worse. A striking example is the number of patents registered in the United States between 1980 and 2000: From Saudi Arabia, there were 171; from Egypt, 77; from Kuwait, 52; from the United Arab Emirates, 32; from Syria, 20 and from Jordan15--- compared to 16,328 from South Korea and 7,652 from Israel. Or of six world regions, that comprising the Middle East and North Africa, received the lowest freedom ratings from Freedom House. The Arab countries also have the highest illiteracy rates and one of the lowest numbers of active research scientists with frequently cited articles. Only sub-Sahara Africa has a lower average standard of living.
Another shock came in the 2003 publication of China of a list of the 500 best universities in the world. The list did not include a single one of the more than 200 universities in the Arab countries.
It is not as if there is not the wealth in the Arab/Islamic world to change these things, for clearly there is and there has been huge wealth generated from the region’s oil and nat-gas. But just as clearly, that wealth does not make its way down from either the autocrats who rule S. Arabia, the Emirates, Dubai and Bahrain, nor from the dictators that rule Libya, Egypt, Syria, nor from the religious authorities that rule Iran (a Persian rather than an Arab nation; but an Islamic nation nonetheless). Shame, then, upon the autocrats and dictators who’ve kept their people in the literal Dark Ages, when the rest of the world is leaping into the modern world with abandon. Once the very centre of academic studies… once the region that gave us algebra and astronomy… once the region of great literature and philosophy… the Middle East has become the region of ignorance, un-and-mislearning; of poverty; of dictatorship; of misrule.
