Instapundit points to this piece in FP, basically pointing out that, gee, Arabs aren’t culturally backwards.
People of Arab descent living in the United States are doing far better than the average American. That is the surprising conclusion drawn from data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2000 and released last March. The census found that U.S. residents who report having Arab ancestors are better educated and wealthier than average Americans.
Whereas 24 percent of Americans hold college degrees, 41 percent of Arab Americans are college graduates. The median income for an Arab family living in the United States is $52,300Ñ4.6 percent higher than other American familiesÑand more than half of all Arab Americans own their home. Forty-two percent of people of Arab descent in the United States work as managers or professionals, while the same is true for only 34 percent of the general U.S. population. For many, this success has come on quickly: Although about 50 percent of Arab Americans were born in the United States, nearly half of those born abroad did not arrive until the 1990s.
That immigrants do better than their compatriots back home is of course no surprise. What is far less common is for immigrants to perform that much better than the average population of their adopted home. This fact should prompt important debates that transcend how Arab immigrants are faring in the United States.
Consider, for example, the popular notion that cultural factors loom large behind the Middle EastÕs appalling poverty. Cultural explanations for why some succeed when others fail have a long history. In 1904, German sociologist Max Weber famously argued that the ÒProtestant ethicÓ was more compatible with capitalism than religions such as Confucianism and Taoism. Of course, the Asian economic miracle forced a revision of these assumptions. The same thing happened to ÒAsian values,Ó the idea that cultural factors explained the regionÕs phenomenal rates of economic growth. The Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s gave that cultural theory an even shorter shelf life.
The Middle EastÕs poor economic and social performance today has also prompted explanations of some malignancy in the prevailing culture. The respected Harvard University historian David S. Landes wrote in his 1998 book, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, that the ill that plagues these countries Òlies with the culture, which (1) does not generate an informed and capable work force; (2) continues to mistrust or reject new techniques and ideas that come from the enemy West (Christendom) and (3) does not respect such knowledge as members do manage to achieve.Ó
And I tore Landes and Huntington to shreds in an essay for my thesis class during my senior year.
In the fifth chapter of The Clash of Civilizations, Huntington discusses the Islamic Resurgence, a phenomenon which Huntington describes as one that has taken over every Muslim country throughout the world, where every Muslim from Nigeria to Indonesia has had their collective Islamic conscience raisedÑas manifested through vast cultural, political, and social changes. He goes on to describe Islamic culture as ÒinhospitableÓ.
ÒThe general failure of liberal democracy to take hold in Muslim societies is a continuing a and repeated phenomenon for an entire century beginning in the late 1800s. This failure has its source at least in part in the inhospitable nature of Islamic culture and society to Western liberal concepts.Ó (Huntington, 114)
Huntington makes a rather bold claim to state that Islamic culture is fundamentally inhospitable to Western liberal conceptsÑnamely individualism, capitalism, and democracy. Landes makes a similar claim, albeit more articulate, it remains loaded with false dogmatic assumptions that are not based on anything.
ÒIt lies, I would argue, with the culture, which (1) does not generate an informed and capable workforce; (2) continues to mistrust or reject new techniques and ideas that come from the enemy West (Christendom); and (3) does not respsect such knowledge as members do manage to achieve, whether by study abroad or by good fortune at home.Ó (Landes, 410)
Both of these claims are made with little evidence and with nothing to support their assertions that Islamic culture is inherently antagonistic towards the West. Both authors would agree that in their views, Islam is against the ideas of Lockeian liberalism, namely, of individualism, capitalism, and democracy. While this may be more true in certain parts of the Islamic world, particularly the more extreme ones, there is nothing in Islam that makes it inherently antagonistic to the WestÑdespite Huntington’s assertions of Dar al-Harb and Dar al-Islam. Neither Huntington nor Landes uses credible evidence within the Islamic world to establish these claimsÑLandes makes no attempt to show where his assumptions come from whatsoever, and Huntington quotes a politically conservative Lebanese political science professor (Fouad Ajami) at Johns Hopkins University, who is not a scholar on Islam.
