WHY HAS ONCE GRTEAT CIVILIZATION. FALLEN SO FAR BEHIND THE REST OF THE WORLD

1. The Obstacles To Progress in the
Arab World
Norvell B De Atkine
youstahz@aol.com
Why does a once great empire lag
so far behind the rest of the
world?

2. The Great Arab/Islamic Empire

3. The Most Advanced in the World
Al-Kharazmi
Chemistry
Mathematics
Greek Classics
Philosophy
Astronomy
Navigation
Medicine

4. Military Prowess Unmatched
These 7th century warriors
conquered all before them

5. What Went Wrong
• Best to read the book of the same title by
Bernard Lewis.
– Self-Sufficiency/isolation
– Trade route shift
– Fragmentation
– Mongol invasion
– ossification

6. The Indicators
• Economic output
• Scientific achievement
• Political progress
• Education
• Brain drain
The Arab image today

7. Why the Continuing Stagnation?
• The 12 Obstacles
– The burden of history
– The austere natural environment
– Cultural stagnation
– Politicized Ulama
– Politicized military
– Stagnated economy
– The language burden
– The sclerotic education system
– An irresponsible and/or bought media
– Fragmented ethnic mosaic
– Saladin versus a civil society

8. The Burden of History
then…….
W

9. Arabia Now….
2
22 weak nations

10. Natural environment

11. Water

12. Arab Cultural Stagnation
• Paucity of good books
• Research minimal
• Literacy not high
• Political constraints
• Religious constraints
• Western pop culture

13. Politicized Clergy
but not Islam

14. Islamic Scholar Speaks
• KUWAIT CITY: Dr Hamed bin Hamad Al-Ali, professor of Sharia
and Islamic Studies at the Kuwait University says it is legal for
Muslims to kill the Danish caricaturist who abused Prophet
Muhammad (PBUH). However, “as long as we do not abide by
the application of the Islamic Sharia and Muslims are weak, we
have to resort to public interests,” he said.
• Al-Ali also said from the religious point of view it is legal to kill
the Jews in Palestine because they are the occupiers.
• Arab Times 8 Feb 2006

15. Politicized Military

16. Stagnated Economy
• Socialism
• Wasta
• Corruption
• Bureaucracy but no institutions
• Bakshish; wealth distribution system
• Culture that hinders entrepreneurship
• Educational barriers
• Read Mullahs, Merchants and Militants; The
Economic Collapse of the Arab World. By Steve
Glain

17. The Language of Creation; the
power to galvanize…or inhibit
• The three levels and multiplicity of dialects
– Classical
– Modern standard
– Street
– Kayfa Hallukah
– Zayak
– Kayf Hallak
– Kiifek
– Shloonik

18. Arabic and Thought
• Hyperbole
• Bombast
• Imprecision
• Context not content
• The words of Dr Ali Al-Wardi. Famous
Iraqi historian and social scientist.
Translated from his book, The Character
of the Iraqi Individual

19. Language and Thought
• In Iraq as in many other Arab countries, we’ve been
cursed by that huge difference between the slang –
Arabic and the classical Arabic.
• Iraqis use slang in their daily life while they use
classical Arabic in their writings and while giving
speeches.
• This has played an important role in forming the
character of the Iraqi individual and has increasingly
developed the dualism inside him.
• A wide number of scientists agree that language has
a great impact on man’s way of thinking- according
to them; thinking is a kind of a silent language.

20. Arabic and Thought
• As Iraqis, we use two languages so, ,we actually use two kind
of thinking. In our daily life we speak slang but whenever we
are in a middle of a big celebration, we shift to classical Arabic
and the same goes for writing an article or a letter.
• By doing so, we are adopting two characters and thinking
according to two different styles.
• Today, we listen to hundreds of speeches and read hundreds of
articles filled with poetic rhymes and grammatical decoration,
nevertheless those speeches and writings fail to touch the
essence of our agonies and sufferings.
• What mostly concerns the speaker is to pick up unique
synonyms instead of giving a brief but useful description to
what he is tackling.
• Some listeners judge the speaker according to his grammar.
They might underestimate him just because he did not use
powerful words.

21. Education System

22. Education
• Learning by rote
• Gender inequalities
• Heavily Islamic
• Heavily politically oriented
• Not career oriented

23. MEDIA
Plays to emotions. Most is bought and paid for by the governments or
political movements. Largely irresponsible, propagandistic. Very little true
independence.

24. Ethnicity

25. Civil Society? Impediments
• The corruption of the intellectual class
• The lack of a civic consciousness
• The infection of extremist “religious” movements,
leading to the replacement of the utopian dream
of Pan-Arabism by an even greater chimera, The
restoration of the Caliphate.
• The habit of despotic or authoritarian rule.
• “A thousand years of tyranny better than one
day of chaos”

26. CONCLUSION
So what is the future of the
Arab world? Will it lead to
some form of representative
governments or simply more
of the same death, destruction
and repression? I see the
glass half full.
The inked finger of Iraq
Suicide bombing in Israel