An article by Philip Carl Salzman in the Canadian National Post examines "Why Arabs suffer."
It catalogues a number of areas where the Arab world lags behind most of the rest of the world:
The Arab region not only ranked last on the freedom scale, but the gap between Arab countries and the next-to-last ranked region, Africa, was substantial. The authors also found the Arab world lagged in gender equality, education, Internet use, human welfare and technological development.
"The [total] average [scientific] output of the Arab world per million inhabitants is roughly 2% that of an industrialized country," the authors noted. "In 1981, the Republic of Korea was producing 10% of the output of the Arab world; in 1995, it almost equalled its output."
In the number of frequently cited scientific papers generated per million inhabitants, Switzerland scored 79.90, the United States 42.99, Israel 38.63. Among Arab nations, Kuwait led the pack with 0.53, followed by Saudi Arabia with 0.07, Egypt at 0.02, and Algeria at 0.01.
The piece places the blame not on Western imperialism--which usually gets the blame for everything under the sun--but on the governmental structure of Arab countries:
What is missing in the Arab Middle East are the cultural tools for building an inclusive and united state. The cultural glue of the West and other successful modern societies --consisting of the rule of law and constitutionalism, which serve to regulate competition among unrelated groups -- is absent in the Arab world. The frame of reference in a tribalized society is always "my group vs. the other group." This system of "balanced opposition" is the structural alternative that stands in stubborn opposition to Western constitutionalism.
The suffering is likely to continue until the Arab world decides to embrace an ordered system and the rule of law.
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