Good Addictions

I recently read the following in the Economist (July 23rd, 2009 issue):
“The total manufacturing exports of the entire Arab world have recently been below those of the Philippines (with less than one-third the population) or Israel (with a population not much bigger than Riyadh’s). From 1980 to 2000 Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Syria and Jordan between them registered 367 patents in the United States. Over the same period South Korea alone registered 16,328 and Israel 7,652.”

Depressing as it may sound, so long as I can remember, there has been little if any achievement in the Arab world, whether economic, technological, political, social, or cultural (with the exception of a few isolated cases in the UAE). This is confirmed by similar reports that show very little progress in the last twenty years, while much of the developing world including India, China and Brazil took a big leap forward. So I started to question whether, as a people, we have what it takes.

Is it that we are inherently lazy? Is it due to certain aspects of our culture? Bad habits? To what extent is it a problem of leadership? Internal divisions? How much has foreign intervention and imperialism negatively affected our progress? Naturally each of these questions warrants extensive research beyond the scope of this article.

I personally think that in some areas we have even gone backwards. So I decided to go backwards myself, in time that is. I thought to look to a time when we were advanced, and that was between 9th to 13th centuries A.D., to what is known as the Islamic world’s Renaissance, the Islamic Golden Age. To my surprise, I found that we were closer in our thinking to the developed world one thousand years ago than now, even with all the current globalization, ease and increase of travel, trade, communication and instant exchange of news and information.

It turns out, according to Wikipedia, that during the Islamic Golden Age, the “Abbassids were influenced by the Qur’anic injunctions and hadith such as “the ink of the scholar is more holy than the blood of martyr,” stressing the value of knowledge. During this period the Muslim world became the unrivaled intellectual centre for science, philosophy, medicine and education… The Abbasids established the “House of Wisdom” (بيت الحكمة) in Baghdad, where scholars, both Muslim and non-Muslim, sought to gather and translate all the world’s knowledge into Arabic.

“Many medieval Muslim thinkers pursued humanistic, rational and scientific discourses in their search for knowledge, meaning and values. A wide range of Islamic writings … show that medieval Islamic thought was open to the humanistic ideas of individualism, occasional secularism, skepticism and liberalism.

“Religious freedom, though society was still controlled under Islamic values, helped create cross-cultural networks by attracting Muslim, Christian and Jewish intellectuals and thereby helped spawn the greatest period of philosophical creativity in the Middle Ages. Another reason the Islamic world flourished during this period was an early emphasis on freedom of speech.”

Contrast that to now where the number of books translated into Arabic every year in the entire Arab world is one-fifth the number translated by Greece into Greek. Where, instead of fighting back with reason, we issue fatwas on people that challenge us and our way of life. Where we don’t accept criticism, making it more difficult to honestly address our weak points and improve. Where tradition is never questioned. Where we seem to be driven more by emotion than by reason – honor killings, tribal and family feuds are a reality. Where we suppress women and suppress freedom of expression. Where we have little respect for the individual and even less tolerance for those that differ from us. Note that a majority of Arabs that left the Arab world and settled somewhere else are Christian. What benefit has conservatism brought to Arabs? Why don’t we celebrate beauty? Why do we have to hide it behind a veil? Why do we have this obsession with shame to the point that fathers and brothers are killing their daughters and sisters in the name of honor, and large parts of society even support it. Isn’t this the real shame? Partly due to war, poverty and having to raise kids on their own, but partly due to lack of good opportunities, more Arab women are having to resort to prostitution to make ends meet.

According to the Economist, March 2007, “the increase in female employment in the rich world has been the main driving force of growth in the past couple of decades. Those women have contributed more to global GDP growth than have either new technology or the new giants, China and India.” Whereas even in the 21st century, women still cannot drive in Saudi Arabia.

Again, what has conservatism brought to the Arab world but more extremism, more close-mindedness, less tolerance, more frustration? It has led to the isolation of parts of society instead of inclusion. Why don’t we realize, just like the America and Europe of today, and the Muslims a thousand years ago, that it is diversity and respect of our differences that brings richness of intellect, it is the exchange of fresh ideas that leads to creativity and innovation. It is not the blind conformity and the blind acceptance of tradition that leads to progress (what Socrates realized 300 B.C.), but a healthy level of skepticism, secularism.

The Italians may tell the Germans maybe we’re not as productive as you, but at least we know how to enjoy life, we have this joie de vivre. I imagine some Lebanese or Egyptian making a similar claim to the Italian, but overall, we are neither productive nor have a joie de vivre. Studies are conducted yearly asking people in countries around the world to rate their happiness. In the last few years, not a single Arab country is in the top twenty.

It is my belief that certain ingredients are essential for the intellectual, economic and social advancement of a people, a nation, a region. Freedom of expression leads to creativity and innovation, art and culture, let alone individual empowerment (the feeling that I can make a difference, versus helplessness and apathy). From this follows respect for the individual, tolerance (except for tolerance of intolerance), equality of opportunity, transparency, accountability, lack of corruption, the adoption of reason over tradition, critical thinking. Let’s ask the right questions in the hope of attainment of better knowledge. Let’s have a healthy level of skepticism. When making decisions, let us use our head over our passion, logic over emotion. Let’s do fact based research, follow a scientific approach, be open to criticism and fight back with reason not death threats. We humans are different, let’s respect our differences so long as we don’t step over one another. It is my strong belief that this will lead to more productivity, happier and more harmonious communities, and a better standard of living for the majority.

link to comments/responses from a Pakistani blog pktimes:

Tags: Arabs, conservatism, islam, islam golden age, lack of progress, Progress

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 at 12:36 pm and is filed under Letters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.