The Middle East is getting its usual share of attention at Davos but one wonders if it is the right kind of attention. There are the usual platitudes spewed by articulate, unelected pro-western leaders who are keeping the lid on things back home.
Most of them are more popular among the Davos crowd than they probably are in their home countries.
One wonders why, if Britain's Conservative leader David Cameron can be present at the same forum where Labor Prime Minister Tony Blair and his heir apparent Gordon Brown are speaking, Arab dissidents can't be heard alongside the assorted Kings, potentates and does-anyone-know-them-in-Cairo technocrat prime ministers.
"Israel and the Palestinians are committed to resolving the conflict dividing them," we heard Tzipi Livni, Vice-Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian Authority President, tell us on Thursday. Livni said Israel was committed to a "two state solution, living side by side in peace." Abbas declared he was "confident" the foundations were present for a resumption of peace talks.
Shimon Peres, Vice-Prime Minister of Israel said, possibly for the umpteenth time, that "economic cooperation between Israel, the Palestinians, the Jordanians and the international community would help integrate the peoples of the region and stimulate prosperity."
All that is very good but didn't Hamas win the Palestinian parliamentary election last year? What about Abbas telling us how he plans to roll back support for Hamas and ensure that he really starts controlling affairs in Gaza and the West Bank.
Issues of the non-Middle East Muslim world received a somewhat more realistic appraisal at a panel on 'The Challenge to Moderate Islam in South-East Asia' (which I moderated). The panel's participants included an American-Malaysian Imam, a Christian Indonesian academic, a Malaysian Muslim feminist and a Philippines government official.
Everyone agreed on one thing. When asked whether Islamist radicals are getting stronger or weaker in South-East Asia, the panelists answered that the radicals will become stronger if nothing is done to challenge them. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf added that the U.S.-led War on Terror is often perceived in the Muslim world as a war on Islam.
The wider Muslim world, stretching from Morocco to Indonesia, also featured in discussions on demographics. Muslim countries have the highest birth rate outside sub-Saharan Africa. There are 485 million Muslims around the world under the age of 15 and half of them are unlikely to ever go to school unless Muslim governments start investing heavily in primary education.
Four of the ten largest cities in the world in the very near future will be Muslim majority cities -Jakarta (Indonesia), Dhaka (Bangladesh), Karachi (Pakistan) and Cairo (Egypt). Urbanization in the Muslim world has been far more rapid than in other parts of the world. For example, at the beginning of the twentieth century, only ten percent of Muslims in the Middle East lived in the cities.
As China and India emerge as the newly empowered players on the global stage, Muslim countries will still feel left out of the global power equation notwithstanding their enlarged populations. The combined GDP of the 57 countries that comprise the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) is less than the current GDP of France.
Ignorance fed by lack of education opportunities and assertive religiosity combined with the dislocation of urbanization is likely to feed the Muslim sense of powerlessness and rage that is a source of instability not only in Muslim majority nations but also in countries where Muslims are a growing minority.
One need not embrace alarmist "Clash of Civilizations" rhetoric but can we try and expand the process of learning about the Muslim world, beyond listening repeatedly to the pronouncements of America's favorite Muslim rulers?