(03-09-2019, 01:26 AM)Jagfan44 Wrote:

(03-08-2019, 07:34 PM)B2hibry Wrote: Not the top foreign aid recipient and the aid they do get is nearly entirely for security purposes, not development etc. Their tourism and technology sector allows them to thrive when compared to neighbors.

This exactly. I hate to say it but it's just what it is. Basically the entire middle east, what contributions to the world come from this region? What innovation? Were it not for one natural resource the entire region would be another South America.

About half the world's population adheres to one of the two major religions that came out of the middle East.
Arabs after Muhammad were one of the first civilizations in history to allow multiple religions to live side-by-side.  And they maintained this for centuries. Remember that only one generation passed between the time that the Romans first officially tolerated Christianity to the time that they started trying to force people to adopt Christianity. It's true that the Muslims only ever tolerated Christians and Jews, and it's true that they sometimes failed to tolerate Christians and Jews. However, prior to this moment in history, rulers had tried to stamp out or at least desecrate and syncretize the religions of conquered people groups.
Most of the stars in the sky have Arabic names.
Arabs in the years 1000-1400 made major strides in tracking the stars and the planets more precisely than the Greeks before them had. The earliest description of the scientific method that we have was written in the Arabic language, in Basra in the 1100s. The earliest explanation of Algebra that we have was written in Arabic in North Africa.

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