I wrote about how the middle east is not a merit based society. I am reading Pre-Industrial

[Bucky]

1. As a history teacher I try to cover this each year with my kids

You know, when we're not busy doing standardized tests...

But you could start googling "Islamic Golden Age" and the Abbasid Dynasty, when Baghdad was the center of the world's intellectual universe. Basically, Europe and Islam did a doe-see-doe on their respective Renaissances and Medieval periods. When Europe was feudal and xenophobic, Islam was enlightened (at least the elite were) and sought scientific truths. When Europe started being enlightened, Islam (mostly in reaction to the Mongol conquests, but also somewhat weakened by winning the crusades) went into intellectual & politcal regression