What the West has most, and what the Arab world most needs, is education. It requires more schools and fewer guns; more universities and fewer aircraft carriers. The American University of Beirut, founded in 1866, has arguably done more to transform the Middle East in positive ways than any other comparable institution, yet it receives only US$3 million in annual aid from the US, which spends billions on armies and weaponry in the region.
Indeed, the cost of a single month of western military spending in Iraq or Afghanistan would be enough to triple total aid for education in the Middle East. The cost of two cruise missiles would build a school, the cost of a Eurofighter a small university.
Education can also have a fundamental effect on forming values. Radical Islamists recognized this long ago and plowed their resources into schools. Saudi Arabia recognized it in the 1970s as it sought to expand its influence, and over the years the Kingdom has funded thousands of schools and colleges that teach its stringent brand of Wahhabi Islam.
In Afghanistan and Pakistan, the radical vision is conveyed to the young in religious schools. Indeed, “Taliban” means “students.” The struggle for the future of the Arab and Muslim worlds will be won or lost not on the battlefield but in the classroom.
Paul Salem is director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, Lebanon.
COPYRIGHT: PROJECT SYNDICATE/EUROPE’S WORLD
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