Opinion Editorials, November 2003, www.aljazeerah.info
Human Price of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine
Israeli daily aggression on the Palestinian people
Mission and meaning of Al-Jazeerah
Cities, localities, and tourist attractions
World of Islam economic map
Munnoo Bhai
The Daily Times, Pakistan, 11/10/03
It is hard to deny that ignorance is the biggest and most basic reason for poverty. Replacing ignorance with enlightenment, however, is not a priority with our financial experts and economic reformers
The State Bank has announced that poverty in the country has neither decreased nor is expected to decrease. The declaration belies the good tidings from the country’s economic doctors and financial messiahs that the economy has reached the take-off stage and is close to taking the final turn towards prosperity.
A third of Pakistan’s people have an income of less than two dollars a day. Over the past fifteen years, the proportion of those living under extreme poverty has risen from 13 to 33 per cent. Achievement in terms of ending poverty has thus been no better than ending dearness and illiteracy. The results of our campaigns against poverty, illiteracy and dearness are similar to the war on global terrorism. Our drives to end poverty and illiteracy have resulted in Pakistan becoming the eighth poorest and most illiterate country and as a result of the worldwide ‘war,’ terrorism has spread from Jerusalem to New York and from Kabul to Baghdad.
The State Bank says poverty cannot be ended without eliminating the causes of poverty, just as terrorism cannot be eliminated without addressing the causes of terrorism. Asking those responsible for poverty to devise methods, projects and plans to end poverty precludes the possibility of poverty alleviation just as recruiting terrorists to curb terrorism can lead only to terrorism going out of control.
The eight poorest countries on the only planet in the solar system having a human population are Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Somalia, Nigeria, Mozambique and Pakistan. Majority of the population in six of the eight countries is Muslim. Six of the world’s poorest countries, thus belong to the ‘world of Islam’ that from seventh to fourteenth century led the way in chemistry, mathematics, philosophy, astronomy, and medicine and for six centuries since has been promoting anti-science and anti-enlightenment attitudes. Today, this ‘world of Islam’ consists of fifty-six countries in ten regions. It has a population of 1.3 billion — a fifth of the entire humanity. This ‘world of Islam’ has been endowed with two thirds or three fourths of the world’s mineral wealth and oil but twenty-two of the 56 countries, that is forty per cent, refuse to have anything to do with democracy and human rights. Fifteen per cent of the countries have hereditary monarchies. Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, United Arab Emirates and Kuwait have 700 billion barrels of oil but the gross domestic product of the entire ‘world of Islam’ is $1.05 trillion compared to United States’ GDP of $14 trillion, France’s $1.5 trillion, Germany’s $2 trillion, England’s $1.5 trillion and Europe’s sickest economy, Italy’s $1.05 trillion. Kuwait, United Arab Emirates and Brunei have a per capita income in excess of $10,000 but in fifty of the fifty-six countries the per capita income is less than $5,000. In fact, forty-five of the countries have a per capita income of less than $1,000.
It is hard to deny that ignorance is the biggest and most basic reason for poverty. Replacing ignorance with enlightenment, however, is not a priority with our financial experts and economic reformers. As a result, more than 800 million of the 1.3 billion people in the ‘world of Islam’ are illiterate. There are no more than 600 universities in the ‘world of Islam’ and none of them comes up to international standards. In a single developed country, Japan, by comparison, there are 1,000 universities engaged in research and teaching at international standards. A single city, Tokyo, has 113 top universities. The United States has 5,758 and our neighbour India 8,407 universities.
The entire ‘world of Islam’ has no more than 300,000 scientists — nearly 230 per million. The United States alone has 1.1 million scientists and Japan 700,000. The United States, a country of 290 million, boasts of 227 Nobel laureates.
Poverty, hunger and unemployment used to force nations in the past to accept colonisation by developed nations. Today, the poor countries forgo sovereignty on account of indebtedness.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python. (Alquds,10/25/03). |
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