3. In terms of outsiders coming in to destroy your culture, this doesn't really explain why the Middle East is so horribly behind. Most if wasn't colonized, after all, or at least not until pretty late. In fact, the areas that were colonized earlier, like Northern Africa, are a lot better off than those that weren't (like Yemen or Saudi Arabia). Most of the Middle East as we normally think about it was under Ottoman rule until the end of WWI, for instance. East Asia on the other hand has done a lot better, even when you consider areas like India that was colonized well before. And countries that have done well have tended to be the ones opening up to foreign influences in a major way, like Japan in the nineteenth century or China in the last couple of decades. If you were to remove oil from the equation the Middle East is really in horrible, horrible shape. Especially in cultural or non-economic terms, I might add.
I think we have to make a distinction between Western colonizations, Eastern (European) colonization, and Ottoman colonization.
