# Political oppression (at the hands of autocratic forms of government marked by a lack of democracy); # The rise of the Wahhabi brand of Islam (along with the retreat of the tolerant model which had prevailed for centuries); # The spread of tribal values which came with the spread of the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam; # Educational systems that are completely divorced from the age; and, finally, # Widespread corruption, which is the inevitable result of political oppression. Possibly the most dangerous of the many negative effects of political oppression is that it kills social mobility, in the sense that it denies the best elements in society the opportunity to rise to leading positions in various fields. The death of a healthy process of social mobility makes for a static situation in which inept and mediocre elements come to occupy top positions by dint of accepting, indeed, of supporting, oppression and through unquestioning loyalty to their superiors. As oppression kills social mobility, so does the lack of social mobility kill competence in all fields. Oppression produces followers, not competent people, with the result that widespread mediocrity becomes the norm. This produces a general climate of despair, and from this comes the mentality of violence, with its attendant devaluation of the value of human life, whether of oneself or of others. In other words, Arab and Islamic societies in general are today caught in an equation which I call ‘the equation of destruction’: autocracy kills social mobility; lack of social mobility destroys competence at all societal levels; lack of competence at all societal levels creates a powerful evil energy which is despair; despair breeds a mentality of violence, cheapens the value of human life and creates a desire for revenge. Over the last four decades, many have written about the rising violence in a large number of Islamic and Arab societies; strangely enough, none of them used the terms ‘competent’ or ‘incompetent’ in their analysis of this phenomenon. This is as true of eminent professors in top-notch universities, like Harvard’s Samuel P. Huntington, as it is of journalists. I have never come across this key word in all my readings on the subject. This calls to mind a talk I gave a few years ago to MBA students at the American University in Cairo, in which I remarked that in hundreds of conversations I had had with various interlocutors about public figures, both local and international, the word competence never came up. It is an incomprehensible omission, especially for a management man like myself, who knows that problems are created by lack of competence while success in all its forms comes from competence. In fact, I believe the despair felt by so many in Islamic and Arab societies, the sense of helplessness and hopelessness that breeds anger then violence, stems from the fact that these societies are run by human resources selected not for their competence but for their subservience and allegiance. After all, competence, as defined by modern management science, is of no great concern to an autocratic political system. Educational systems that are out of step with the age are a vital link in the chain of destruction. Educational systems in most Islamic and Arab societies encourage insularity and reinforce a sense of isolation from the rest of humanity, promote fanaticism and lay down, without any scientific basis, religious frameworks for struggles that are purely political. By invoking religious texts taken out of context they not only promote intolerance, non-acceptance of ‘the Other’, and a lack of belief in pluralism, but consecrate the lowly status of women. Moreover, most of the curricula are designed to develop a mentality of ‘answering’ rather than of ‘questioning,’ in a world where progress and development are driven by the dynamics of questioning. In most Islamic and Arab societies, educational programmes fail to instill in the minds of the young that ‘progress’ is a human process, in the sense that its mechanisms are neither eastern nor western, but universal. This is borne out by the fact that the list of most advanced countries in the world includes some that are Western/Christian, like the United States and Western Europe, and others with a Japanese, Chinese or Muslim background (like Malaysia). There is a clear and growing tendency in the humanities and social sciences to disengage, as it were, from the common fund of human experience, the cumulative legacy built up over the ages by various civilizations. In a lecture I delivered recently at a British University, I said that in the sixties I had read most of the classics, from Homer to Sartre, passing through hundreds of names, languages and backgrounds. Like many of my contemporaries, I read these works in Arabic. The unfettered access we had at the time to the timeless classics of world literature linked us to humanity in a way that is inconceivable today, with the paucity of translations in the cultural arena in Arab and Islamic countries. My audience at that lecture were amazed to learn that, along with others of my generation, I had read Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Euripides, Sophocles, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Racine, Moliere, Voltaire, Jean Jacques Rousseau, all the Russian classics, Flaubert, Balzac, Bernard Shaw, Pirandello, Albert Camus, Steinbeck, Faulkner and the gems of German philosophy in Arabic, translated by people predominantly from Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, and published mainly in Egypt and Lebanon. Today, the gap between the minds of young people in Islamic and Arab societies and the masterpieces of human creativity has increased dramatically. In addition, the new generations have become increasingly ‘local’, setting themselves still further apart from humanity and increasing the mentality of violence and its culture. Next: Muslims & The Clash of Civilizations » For more of Tarek Heggy's writtings in English, please visit www.t-heggy-site-contents.org and for Tarek Heggy's writings in French please visit www.metransparent.com/authors/french/tarek_heggy.htm.