The Poverty of Arab culture and economy

Culture and values, along with institutions, history, economics, and ideas of freedom, responsibility and transparency shape society. The Arab and Muslim world is a cesspool of failure and violence. It is not surprising that such a state of failure results in terrorism, hatred, racism and ideological nonsense. Read the recent letter from Al Qaeda’s #2 man Zawahiri to his general in Iraq Zarqawi – about plans for a world wide Caliphate. For Zawahiri and Islam, Iraq is just one battle in the long war for world wide domination. If such an event occurred and the Arabs with their 7th century paganism colonized the West, the human race would be plunged into the abyss of a new dark age – never to recover.

Greater Arabia and its Islamic empire is a disgusting mess. Women are regularly beaten, tortured and burnt alive. Christians and Jews are persecuted and in the past 1400 years have been systematically wiped out from the Middle East and North Africa. Muslims kill apostates, non-Muslims, atheists and ritually behead non-combatants in Iraq and elsewhere adhering to the Koranic doctrine to ‘smite the necks of the infidels’. Two million are dead in the Sudan thanks to Arab gangs and government genocide. Political, economic and social freedoms are unknown and the Arab-Islamic world lies in ruins.

There is no link between poverty and terrorism but there is a link between economic destruction, and racism, hate and ignorance. The poorer your society is, the greater is the chance for barbarity. This fits the Arab-Islamic world. According to the Arab League, the gross national product of all its members amounted to $712 billion or 2 percent of the world's GNP in 2004 – about the same as tiny Holland. Backwards, autarchic, corrupt and largely ignorant of technology, capital and trading opportunities, the Arab-Islamic world has little chance at economic vitality. This in turn leads to frustration and violence in domestic populations most of which is turned against the US and the West. Fascist Arab governments controlling their media and education systems, blame the Jews, the Americans or the West for their failures.

The real cause of Islamic decline and pagan ignorance is of course Islam itself. The religion and social construction of Islam militates against modernity and wealth creation. Even the recent tripling of the price of oil has done nothing to generate sustained growth which can equal or surpass the needs of an increasing population and labor force. Can you envisage the sorry state of affairs in these lands when the price of oil triples and yet no demonstrable benefits can be found ? In Alberta Canada the trebling of oil prices has led to increased social investments, plans for one of the world’s largest refineries, tax reduction and improved infrastructure investments. Clearly Alberta has a different world view than Riyadh, or Teheran.

Corruption, economic backwardness, labor and social restrictions and an anti-female mentality have caused massive unemployment and economic weakness and are the root causes of Greater Arabian failure. Algeria's official unemployment rate is 26.4 percent, Oman's 17.2 percent, Tunisia's 15.6 percent, Jordan's 14.4 percent, Saudi Arabia's 13 percent, Egypt 8 percent and Kuwait 7.1 percent. But these are government figures. Much like Europeans Arab governments lie about real unemployment levels. Count on the real levels being double the official estimates. This means for example that probably 30 % of the population in Saudi Arabia, the world’s richest oil nation, are out of work.

Economic malaise is destroying the lives of the average citizen in Greater Arabia. According to the Iranian news agency, IRNA, the European Commission on the Mediterranean Region estimates that the purchasing power parity income per head in the Arab world is a mere 39 percent of the EU's 2001 average, comparable to many post-communist countries in transition. In nominal terms the figure is 28 percent. These statistics include Israel whose income per capita equals 84 percent of the EU's and the Palestinian Authority [PA] where GDP fell by 10 percent in 2000 and by another 15 percent the year after. In other words Israel is growing and developing its geography and people, while the PA which receives $1 Billion per year from the US, the EU and the UNO, is doing nothing to develop its economy or the lives of its people.

Arab regimes do however have lots of money to spend on the military. In Greater Arabia from Pakistan to Sudan the average regime has increased military spend by 8 % per annum – far in excess of its anemic 2 % GDP growth rate. Pakistan which has endured a horrendous earthquake has misspent billions of dollars in foreign aid on nuclear weapons, nuclear reactors and arming itself for war with democratic India. Now of course the international jet set crowd wants more foreign aid for Pakistan and indeed for every other Arab regime. These monies will of course feed military contractors and the bank accounts of the ruling elite.

This corruption and misspent money leads to the destruction of wealth. All the national accounts of Greater Arabia are in tatters. For example Saudi Arabia managed to produce a budget surplus only once since 1982. Per capita income in the kingdom plunged from $26,000 in 1981 to $7000 today. Higher oil prices may well continue throughout 2006, further masking the calamitous state of the region's economies –but the destruction of wealth and of the human spirit will only continue apace. Charlene Barshefsky the United States Trade Representative from 1997-2001 stated in the New York Times that:

"Muslim countries in the region trade less with one another than do African countries, and much less than do Asian, Latin American or European countries. This reflects both high trade barriers ... and the deep isolation Iran, Iraq and Libya have brought on themselves through violence and support for terrorist groups ... The Middle East still depends on oil. Today, the United States imports slightly more than $5 billion worth of manufactured goods and farm products from the 22 members of the Arab League, Afghanistan and Iran combined - or about half our value-added imports from Hong Kong alone."


Greater Arabia is the second poorest area in the world after Sub-Saharan Africa. Pakistan and Egypt survive on US foreign aid – while their newspapers and so-called intellectuals engage in outrageous anti-American behavior. The US is spending $100 billion annually in Iraq to fight terrorism and form a democratic polis – and no Arab nation is helping them. This is the heart of the Arab malaise. Islam and Greater Arabia have nothing in common with and no interest in the basic ideals that produce civilization, wealth, democracy and humanism. For those who apologize for terror and Islamic ignorance you should think again. You should think hard and long about why Greater Arabia is an unmitigated economic and social disaster – surpassed only perhaps by that other great lie of the 20th century embraced by intellectuals and academics – Communist Russia.