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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elroy who wrote (278982)	3/9/2006 5:05:50 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572298

considering the West did not relinquish most of its control over the ME until the 1970s, I am not sure what the author is saying. Uhmmmm, hate to burst your bubble there, but the most successful nations in the ME today are the ones that didn't get their independence until the 1970's. Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE (all British protecturates until the early 1970s) are the jewels in the ME crown as far as stability, freedom, education, virtually any metric you want. Immigration from other ME countries into those four supports that claim. Kuwait, Qatar, UAE etc are more protectorates or city states than nations. Oil combined with their smallness made them more manageable which enabled them to be successful. However, the author didn't even rate them a comment let alone give them any credit. His argument was that Muslims were incapable of success because of the nature of Islam. And he said to look no further than the condition of the Muslim nation-states. My point was that given that many of them were under colonial rule, some as late as the 1970s [Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, ]and the rest during much of the 19th and part of the 20th centuries, I felt that that was an unfair assessment. Maybe you agree with him but I still consider it an unfair assessment. On the other hand, the country's which got their independence sooner rather than later (Saudi, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt) are years behind in terms of development. The Saudis have tons of material wealth because of their natural resources, but fail in basically every other metric of development. There is no question that Muslims have some of the worst leaders in the world. However, I am not prepared to blame Islam for that condition. Watched Syriana yesterday, interesting film. At one point the oil analyst tells the sheik he is wasting the greatest natural resource in the history of mankind. Hard to disagree.... I heard its good.