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Arabs Look at Themselves and Don't Like It
The death of Saudi al Qaeda leader Abdulaziz al-Moqrin, and three other al Qaeda members, was unique in several respects. This killing of Islamic terrorists was openly applauded by most Saudi, with the police being cheered in the neighborhood where the four were hiding out and killed. That had never happened before. The general population saw the murder and beheading of Paul Johnson as crossing some kind of line. But there's something else going on as well. Arabs are beginning to question the wisdom of this al Qaeda "jihad" against the rest of the world. People throughout the Arab world cheered as pictures of the burning towers appeared on their TV sets on September 11. Here was an Arab accomplishment. The sad fact is that there have been very few Arab accomplishments in the past century or so. Currently, the 300 million citizens of the Arab league countries, with a population ten times that of the state of California, have an economy (GDP) half the size of Californias. Even with all the oil wealth, the majority of the worlds known oil deposits in fact, the Arab world has fallen behind every other region in the world, except black Africa, in economic growth and development. Israel, with a population of six million, produces more scientific papers each year than 300 million Arabs. Greece, with a population of 12 million, translates more foreign language books each year than 300 million Arabs. Ignoring new, or foreign, ideas, has long been an Arab custom. But now many more Arabs are beginning to see it as a bad idea. Another bad idea is blaming Israel for all the Arab world's troubles. Most of the Arabs killed in wars and terrorist violence during the last half century had nothing to do with Israel. For example, the 1980s war between Iraq and Iran, which killed several hundred thousand Arabs, had nothing to do with Israel... Posted by: tipper 2004-06-23 |
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