Sublime

Islamic law and theology, and the cultural aspirations of rulers in Egypt, Iran and the Fertile Crescent, had permitted a remarkable flowering of literature, art (especially architecture), science and philosophy. Islam’s cosmopolitan individualism and the wide dissemination of its legal traditions also favoured the growth of a far-flung commercial

showing all Mubarak all the time, by the 2000s had access to more than 400 national and international stations. American movies,

Regional organizations have made little contribution to stability or prosperity in this part of the world. The Arab League, founded in 1945 and now numbering twenty-two Arab countries, has largely ignored internal issues that have held back most of its members and focused instead on maintaining a confrontational, united front against Israel or, mor

The total population of the region today is around 450 million, approximately one-third the population of either China or India. The distribution of people is uneven; Egypt has a population on the order of 100 million, while Bahrain numbers under 2 million. Most are Arab, an ethnic designation for those people descended from the region’s tribal peo

The least successful region has been the Middle East. It was the venue of the first challenge of the era, when Iraq invaded Kuwait. Saddam Hussein’s aggression was repelled, but he remained in power, as did autocrats in nearly every other country of the region. Efforts to promote peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians mostly failed. Iran e

In any case, regardless of the Ummah’s Arab roots, the fact is that at the beginning of the twentieth century, Arabs accounted for the tiniest fraction of the world’s…

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