Book Review: "Mullahs, Merchants and Militants: The Economic Collapse of the Arab World" by Stephen Glain (2005)

Former Wall Street Journal writer and present Newsweek correspondent Stephen Glain explores the Arabic Middle East post-9/11 and delivers a memoir that is supposed to be am economic diagnostique but reads more like a travel memoir from a poor man's Thomas Friedman. This is less a treatise on the Arabic business class than it is like a roaming PJ O'Rourke book but without the laughs.

Of interest is are three chapters in particular: first, his look at Lebanon, and how far that country has declined from the promise it once held; second, the Jordanian bit, which shows how thinly developed that country's economic culture is; and finally, the chapter on Palestine, which once and for all blows the lid off any pretenses that international "aid" organizations have to real development there. Instead, like so many other causes, it has become an industry that primarily benefits those who make a living from it.

Glain is particularly critical of the American aid that goes to Egypt and Jordan, as it squeezes out real investment and perpetuates dictatorships that have no interest in providing adequate public infrastructure that would encourage entrepreneurship. He is also hard on the States in the final section of the book where he says that al-Qaeda's primary complaint is American "policy" in the Middle East. Here, he comes close to ascribing rationality to suicide bombers, which is something I fundamentally disagree with. He focuses heavily on the "poverty breeds terrorism" angle, which, in the Middle East, but curiously not Latin America or non-Muslim Africa, seems to carry some truth.

This book was of mild interest but it hardly blew me away. Regular lurkers will know that I have reviewed other, more engrossing and hard-hitting pieces on the Middle East in the last few weeks, particularly "The Next Attack". Glain's book dragged at times and didn't leave me with a sense of urgency about the issues facing the Arab world, which is usually what happens if I think a book is worth the time it took to read it. Not this time around. It will be a nice contextual piece that will occupy my bookshelf alongside other, more piercing works. That's it.

Overall rating: 6/10