What are the good things Arabs and Muslims have done?

One of the criticisms of the anti-Islamic protests in the U.S. is that the protesters never mention any of the good things that are done by Arabs or Muslims.  Actually, they have tried to show some balance, but there is not much to commend.  Here is how Arabs and Muslims measure up based on some generally accepted international standards: 

Peace

Muslims represent 23 percent of the world’s population, yet they are participants in 84 percent of the armed conflicts. Source: www.religioustolerance.org/curr_war.htm 

Contributions to Society

Eight hundred Nobel Prizes have been awarded to individuals since 1895. Of those, only six were given to Arabs.  While Arabs constitute 5 percent of the world’s population, their share of Nobel Prizes was only ¾ of one percent.   Muslims, who represent 23 percent of the world’s population, were awarded only 1.4 percent of the awards.  

Humanitarian Efforts

On December 26, 2004, an earthquake off the coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra generated a tsunami that wreaked havoc along much of the rim of the Indian Ocean. Particularly hard-hit were the countries of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. About 230,000 people were killed, tens of thousands more were injured, and 100 million became homeless and displaced. Because some Muslims deemed the disaster was “Allah’s will,” they provided only token assistance to their Muslim brothers in Indonesia and Thailand.  Of the 56 nations in the Organization of the Islamic Conference, only three (Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar) gave small amounts of relief aid. Here is the score-card of aid contributions by Muslim vs. Non-Muslim countries: 

Non-OIC countries:   $9,645.6 million or .0113% of total GDP 

OIC countries:           $147.5 million or .0012% of total GDP

(GDP figure excluded Indonesia and Thailand) 

Said another way, the Non-OIC countries contributed 9.4 times that of the OIC countries as a percent of their GDP to a disaster impacting mostly Muslims. 

Civilized Societies

In the 2012 Mercer “Quality of Living” ranking of 221 major cities in the world, Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, ranked 157^th.  Of the 65 cities ranking worse than Riyadh, over half of them were in Muslim-majority countries, including Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.

Tolerance and Multi-culturalism

The last countries to officially end slavery were:  Saudi Arabia (1962), Yemen (1962), Oman (1970), and Mauritania (1980) -- over 100 years after slavery was abolished in the United States.   Slavery is still practiced in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, where 500,000 Black slaves are in bondage -- almost as many as the total number of slaves (645,000) brought to the United States in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. 

All of 56 member countries of the Organization of Islamic Conference refer to Sharia Law for their definition of “human rights.”  Under Sharia Law there is no freedom of religious belief, diminished civil rights for women and non-Muslims, no tolerance of homosexuality or cross-racial marriage. Typically, homosexuals are hung from cranes (Iran) or thrown from the roofs of tall buildings (ISIS-controlled areas). Sharia Law prohibits Muslim women from marrying non-Muslims or Arab Muslim women from marrying non-Arabs – because Muhammad decreed, “Allah has chosen the Arabs above others.” 

Gender Equality

The 2012 UN Arab Human Development Report ranked regions of the world in terms of women’s participation in economic, professional, and political activities.  Here are the results:

North America          63

Oceania                    51

Europe                                 49

Latin America                      39

South & East Asia     35

Arab Countries          26

Sub-Saharan Africa   24

Perhaps the situation is best expressed by the Lebanese-American poet, Khalil Gilbran, who wrote this in 1934: 

Pity the nation. . . 

Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.

Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave

and eats a bread it does not harvest.

Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero,

and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.

Pity a nation that despises a passion in its dream,

yet submits in its awakening.

Pity the nation that raises not its voice

save when it walks in a funeral,

boasts not except among its ruins,

and will rebel not save when its neck is laid

between the sword and the block.

Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox,

whose philosopher is a juggler,

and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking

Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpeting,

and farewells him with hooting,

only to welcome another with trumpeting again.

Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years

and whose strongmen are yet in the cradle.

Pity the nation divided into fragments,

each fragment deeming itself a nation.

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