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Follow the demographic trend in the Middle East, and you will realize that the region is in big trouble.
In the year 1000, the region’s population was about 30 million, and it remained stable until 1800. Between 1800 and 1900, it grew by 75 percent, reaching 58 million. During the 20th Century, it grew by another 565 percent, with the population today totaling 386 million.
Patrick Clawson, deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, observes that «the population increase over 1,000 years is essentially concentrated in a 150-year period between 1875 and 2025. This anomalous period of population growth has been a time of tremendous social, political and economic turmoil.»
In 2000, more than 40 percent of Middle Easterners were under age 15. Phyllis Oakley, former U.S. assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, pointed out that by 2015 the world’s largest proportional youth populations will be living in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the West Bank and Gaza (as well as Mexico and Sub-Saharan Africa). In other words, the Middle East today has one of the largest youth populations in the world.
What kind of future are Arab rulers shaping for their 150 million children? What type of role models are they providing? Sadly, an indicator can be found in a recent initiative by Egypt’s First Lady Suzanne Mubarak, under whose patronage a book was published telling the stories of the «heroes of the Intifada,» with an emphasis on Wafa Idris, the first female Palestinian suicide-bomber. Another indicator: The Lebanese newspaper Al-Anwar reported about a computer game that Hezbollah is developing: It will portray radical shi’ites as heroes and will give Arab boys the chance to fight Israelis in virtual reality. The CDs will be on sale later this month and available in Arabic, English, French and Farsi.
If rulers and leaders are failing so miserably, what about the intellectuals then? As U.S. diplomat Hume Horan asked, «Where are the Arab Reinhold Neibuhrs, Christopher Dawsons, Karl Barths, Martin Bubers? Where are the politically engaged intellectuals who can help a young Arab make coherent, responsible sense of a troubling modern world? They scarcely exist in the Arab world. The few that even try are threatened, jailed, forced into exile — or worse.»
New Republic Editor-in-chief Martin Peretz similarly asked about the Palestinians in particular: ‘ ‘ What hero of the struggle have the Palestinians produced? No Gandhi, certainly. No Mandela. And no Weizmann or Ben-Gurion, either. Their present hero is Saddam Hussein. Do they envision a classless society? No. A transparent society, a democratic society, an accountable society? No, no and no again. Will they transform and free the lives of women, of despised tribes, of gay people, of skeptics? Not a chance. By what vision then will they judge themselves? Nobody says because nobody knows.»
In fact, we know. And herein lies the problem — and the solution. When Arabs in general, and Palestinians in particular, remove from their classroom walls the pictures of suicide-bombers; when they erase from their school curricula praise for jihad; when they stop the inciting rhetoric of blood and martyrdom in their Friday sermons at the mosques — then the pernicious hatred that Arab leaders have inculcated in the minds and hearts of an entire generation of young Arabs may begin to recede.
If they go the extra mile and begin to extol the virtues of life, peace, freedom and coexistence in their schools, media and mosques; and if they allow genuine independent thinkers to voice their views free of censorship or intimidation — then the seeds for societal change would have been planted. And who knows? Generations from now we might even find on Arab classroom walls portraits of the first Egyptian Montesquieu, Palestinian Locke or Saudi Jefferson.
If and when that happens, Middle East population statistics no longer will scare us.
Julián Schvindlerman is a political analyst in Geneva, and a member of the American Jewish Committee.