Paths toward an Arab Knowledge Society

Abstract

The Arabic Science and Technology Gap
and Its Economic Consequences in the
International Development Race
During the first third of the twentieth century, self-critical Muslims asked
themselves two critical questions: “Why do Muslims remain behind, and
why are others progressing?”1 The cause of this dilemma was the confusing
experience of the Muslim world’s decline and subsequent colonial
domination by the West, which hit the Arabs’ sense of self-worth in its core.
Their repeated military defeats by Israel and dependency on foreign technical
and financial development aid demonstrated their own deficits. They
could barely tolerate these humiliations, particularly since they were in
striking contrast to the Qur’anic revelation, which promises Muslims the
leading role in the world. The history of Islam’s expansion during the first
century of the Islamic era seemed to support this belief. However, its gradual
decline was repressed,2 and a fatal apologetic tendency (viz., the passionate
attempt to prove to oneself and others that one’s own inferiority
does not exist) became characteristic of the debates on how to find a suit-
able way out of the crisis, as well as in the case of vital questions concerning
socioeconomic development.3
In the 1960s, a central category of the Arabic worldview appeared in
the highly emotionalized unity of the “West” and “colonialism.” This narrow
perspective of “the Arabs and the West” obstructed the Arab world’s
view of the Far East’s economic and technological dynamics. Up until the
1980s, few Arab economists in science and administration had any concrete
idea of the education, research, and technology-based4 growth dynamic of
the Asian “tiger states” and why they had been so spectacularly successful.
This was largely due to the lack of personal vision, because the countries of
East and Southeast Asia had little interest in those regions that were lagging
behind in the development race. Nor did they feel obligated to offer seminar
events, well-paid according to western examples, in order to remedy
Arab perception deficits.
In other words, Arab economists only became aware of the [Asian]
periphery countries’ dynamic by accident. Certainly, no learning processes
designed to help the Arab world catch up (e.g., conducting case studies of
specific countries, which could be done by students working on their university
theses) took place. The responsible political leaders did not grasp the
necessity of such studies, and, therefore, no research means were made
available. The result was a second self-isolation that, in the 1970s, was
becoming even greater.
After the industrialization strategies of staving off world markets and
import substitution, this self-isolation now appeared in the form of a technological
gap. The full extent of the R&D5 gap caught the attention of Arab
governments only because of the oil-boom, when the OAPEC6 countries, in
particular, unexpectedly found themselves exposed to a massive presence
of East Asian periphery countries while building up infrastructural and
large-scale industrial investments. However, oil revenues concealed the
urgent need for massive investments in education and research in order to
catch up with other regions. It was deemed sufficient to expand educational
opportunities quantitatively, without regard to quality and job market
requirements.7
Growing budgetary demands in the face of the OAPEC countries’
finite oil resources, as well as the unavoidable economic and political pressures
for reform in the non-oil Arab states after the Soviet Union’s collapse,
raised questions about a fundamental strategic reorientation. Added
to this was the increasing international pressure from low-wage Asian
countries to compete on the global level (particularly in such technologies ...