Sublime

Can there be a connection between online universities and the serial insurgencies which, in media noise and human blood, have rocked the Arab Middle East? I contend that there is.

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,

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

Perhaps because of the distinctive ecology of the Near and Middle East, where agrarian society played second fiddle to long-distance trade, Islam was strikingly cosmopolitan. Muslims were first of all members of the umma, the great body of Islamic faithful, and only secondly subjects of their territorial ruler.

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