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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: NickSE who wrote (77729)	2/26/2003 12:58:51 PM
From: NickSE	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Here's an interesting post from another board that really focuses on the problems facing the Arab world. ....All but one of the world's last military dictator regimes are in Muslim countries. There are no real elections in any Muslim country, with the possible exceptions of Turkey and Bangladesh. Of the 30 active conflicts in the world today, 28 concern Muslim governments and/or communities. Read that again: 28 OUT OF 30. Two-thirds of the world's political prisoners are held in Muslim jails in countries 80% of all State executions occur in Muslim countries. Amazing statistics. All those trillions of dollars of oil wealth and billions in aid from the West. If not Islam who else is to blame? Look at Japan, Korea etc. corrupt leaders too but luckily not Islamic so they can progress. Korea alone produces more consumer goods than ALL 60 Islamic countries in total. Fifty-one percent of the Muslim women are illiterate, and only 10.5 percent attend high school. The findings are catastrophic. The Arab states are at the bottom of the Human Development Index, after the nations of South America, the Caribbean and Southeast Asia. One out of every five Arabs lives on less than $2 a day. Over the last 20 years, per capita gross domestic product in the Arab world has risen at an annual rate of 0.5 percent - the lowest rate in the world except for sub-Saharan Africa. In 1998, the combined GDP of all the Arab countries (more than 250 million people) was only five times greater than that of tiny Israel which is one percent of their size in population. The average Israeli makes seventeen times as much money a year as the average Arab. The Arab world spends approximately $2 a person for scientific research, while the Israeli spends $110 per person. The statistics on health are shocking. Muslim infant mortality rates are among the highest in the world: 43.5 per 1,000 in Egypt and 11.6 in wealthy Kuwait (more than twice the Israeli rate, almost twice the figure for Muslims in Israel and five times greater than the rate for Christian Arabs in Israel). The illiteracy rate is 38.7 percent - higher than that of sub-Saharan Africa. The rate of Internet access is 6.6 percent - equal to that of sub-saharan Africa. Arabs who appear on this board are the ELITE and not representative of the Arab population as a whole. Most of the users of this board who are Arab do not live in the Middle East. They enjoy life in Canada, the United States, and Europe. The report rarely mentions Israel, but when comparisons are made, they are instructive: Israel is ranked number 18 in the world in the area of technological achievement; the MOST developed of the Arab countries, Tunisia, is ranked 51st. The reason for all these statistics is not natural poverty. Some of the 22 members of the Arab League covered by the report are rich in oil and other natural resources. Most have an abundance of land and water. The Arab population is not only heir to a glorious culture but is also comprised of talented individuals. The fact is that those who EMIGRATE to the West do well; so do those in Israel, in those areas where they are permitted to do so. What, then, is the reason for these grim statistics? Dictatorial regimes and the lack of political freedom and human rights? One survey, conducted by the American organization Freedom House, classifies countries into three categories. No Arab state is ranked as having a free system of government, and only three are ranked as partly free (Djibouti, Morocco and Jordan). All of the Arab states lack the essential characteristics of modern democracy. Their regimes do not change through elections, and in Syria power was even handed down from father to son as if it were a feudal inheritance. What has emerged in the Arab world is not only poverty and backwardness, but also the enforced imposition of the opinions of the ruling majority on minority groups, such that this world has become a unidimensional, monocultural society that hates foreigners and women - a society that hates the other. Censorship is common in Arab regimes. The rule of law, an independent judiciary and a free press, equal rights for women and minorities - are not common items in Muslim countries, but are rather necessary for success. Because they are not present the Muslim countries do not develop. Thus Egypt, Lebanon and other states have lost the attractive Levantine quality of easygoing, Mediterranean-style pluralism. Alexandria, which was the symbol of this multiculturalism, became a devout Muslim city: The Jews and the Greeks were expelled in the ethnic cleansing perpetrated by Nasser. But all this repression does not mitigate the personal distress that afflicts young Arabs: 51 percent of the teens and 45 percent of the young men and women interviewed for the report want to leave their countries. What has happened in the Arab world is the opposite of what has happened in Israel. Israel changed from a monocultural society into a pluralistic and varied one. Its young people can leave with ease, but they prefer to remain in Israel, and if necessary, even to fight for it. Jews come from all over the world to live and build Israel’s culture and future. Arab society has taken the opposite path: Its young people want to escape the stranglehold, but are not allowed, or are unable, to do so. Muslim cultural ideology is supposedly based upon the Koran. If this is true why can’t the Koran speak to the present generation and make the Muslim world a viable and decent place to live? Why are Muslim countries such dirty hell-holes with no future and weak and ineffective governments dominated by corrupt self- serving elites? Why do Muslim countries fight their neighbors? Why can’t they live in peace with anyone? Why is jihad and fanatical ignorance so common? Why is hatred of the entire rest of the successful world a by-word for Arab? And why is the Muslim world hoping Saddam will win when if he does it is they themselves who will be his slaves?...