Reply #38: thank you

[Douglas Carpenter]

I've also worked a great deal in the Middle East. Now granted, the first place I worked back in the mid 80's was deep in the Asir Mountains in southern Saudi Arabia near the Yemen boarder. Now that place would have lived up to many peoples stereotypes. But that was a place that had only acquired electricity and roads a few years earlier.

The second place I lived, in Al Ain, UAE between 89 and 91 was a fairly modern place not too different then what you describe and it is far more modern today then it was then. Considering that he city was a tribal Oasis back until a two decades earlier, its advancement is really quite stunning.

But even in the most religiously backward country in the Middle East, which is probably Saudi Arabia, if I was to contrast Saudi Arabia today with Saudi Arabia of 1986 - a great deal has changed. Even in a country as strict as Saudi Arabia, the local media now criticizes the government and even the religious authorities. I would agree that the criticism is restrained by western standards. But it far exceeds anything people once imagined would ever be possible. Throughout most of the Arab and much of the Muslim world woman compose more than 50% of University students and are rapidly evolving into the majority of the professional class. There is still a long, long way to go even in the most modern part of the Arab and Islamic world - but it is still a far, far cry from how thing were only two decades ago and a farther cry what many Americans imagine.