An interesting op-ed piece by Peter Bergen raises a good question: For all that the various Arab leagues spend time decrying the way in which the West oppresses Muslims and so on, why are they - both as a community and as individual countries - so conspicuously absent when it comes time to help fellow Muslims? The recent disaster in Asia is just an example - even though the hardest-hit area is one of the most predominantly Muslim parts of Indonesia, the Muslim country that gave the most - Saudi Arabia - gave only $30 million, as much as the Netherlands, and the other countries gave even less. But this is hardly a unique incident; these countries are always the loudest when it's time to claim victimization, and the quietest when it comes time to doing anything about it, especially if it may have a cost to them.
As a percentage of population and GDP, Saudi Arabia's contribution is almost the same as the US's -- the US gave about $1.18 per person, and Saudi Arabia gave about $1.15 per. Kuwait gave about $4 per person, and Qatar gave about $25 per.
Never forget that compared to the US, these countries are teeny-tiny. Even oil-rich Saudi Arabia has a GDP that's only a couple of hundred billion, as opposed to the US's, which is about ten or eleven trillion.
January 10 2005, 12:46:11 UTC 10 years ago
Never forget that compared to the US, these countries are teeny-tiny. Even oil-rich Saudi Arabia has a GDP that's only a couple of hundred billion, as opposed to the US's, which is about ten or eleven trillion.
January 10 2005, 12:46:44 UTC 10 years ago