(^414) THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS
pointing to Muslim economic, spiritual, and intellectual openness in an
earlier golden age. If they could do it then, the reasoning goes, they
can do it now* One would like to say yes, but for two reasons. First,
the scope of competition and level of performance required is far
greater now than it once was. The meaning of "modern" has changed
drastically, far more than Islam. (Such an argument is like saying that
because the British used to produce tennis champions, they should be
able to turn them out today.)^1
Secondly, failure to keep up generates its own immune reactions. In
this regard, the huge oil windfall has been a monumental misfortune.^33
It has intoxicated rulers, henchmen, and purveyors, who have slept on
piles of money, wasted it on largely worthless projects, and managed to
exceed their figuratively (but not literally) limitless resources. Even
Saudi Arabia cannot balance its books. In the process these spoilers
have infuriated the Muslim poor, who in turn have sought an oudet for
rage and outrage in fundamentalist doctrine.
This is the saddest part of the story. Islam, like all religions, has its
pure and hard core, and in a society of extreme machismo, the combi-
nation can be explosive. Hence the quick recourse to violence, for vi-
olence is the quintessential, testosteronic expression of male entitlement.
Hence massacre of religious opponents in Syria; revolution and sup-
pression in Iran; autocratic despotism in Iraq and the Sudan; poison gas
attacks against Kurds in Iraq; genocide in the black south of the Sudan;
both random and targeted murder in Pakistan, Egypt, and Algeria.**
The Algerian violence tells it all: there we have, not a civil war, but a
war against civilians. A favorite murder mode: slit the throat. That
saves bullets and brings the killer closer to God.^34 Gunmen have killed
young women who refuse to 'marry' the heroes of the revolution.
- They will do it now, says Mohammed Talbi, historian and former dean at the Uni-
versity of Tunis. Talbi reminds us that for all the episodes of Muslim intolerance, the
Muslim world has not been guilty of "systematic forcible conversion, nor arbitrary
ghettoization, nor total and massive expulsion, nor genocide, nor, need it be said, a
Holocaust." Le Figaro, 27 March 1997, p. B-27. His account is somewhat overkind,
but the favorable comparison of Islamic with Christian persecution of minorities (im-
plicidy Jews) is correct.
r The last of them, Fred Perry, champion in the 1930s, is memorialized by a statue
at the entrance to Wimbledon: a memento of and salute to a happier era.
** An article by Jean-Paul Mari, "Enquête sur le massacre d'un peuple: Algérie: au delà
de l'horreur," Le nouvel observateur, 23-29 March 1995, p. 58, remarks: "Algeria has
always believed that only violence can found [establish] something." For more on
this, see Miller, God Has Ninety-nine Names, pp. 168 ff. See also Fisk, "Sept journées."