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Responsibility is the missing element. It's the character value without which there can be no economic success.

That's very true, and its actually because of a structural flaw in their "religion," which was really conceived of by its founder as a simple way of extending the domination and control of his violent bandit tribe over the disunited and weakened ME territories after the fall of the Roman Empire. Add this to the fact that successive heresies had broken up Eastern Christian unity, and you had kingdoms or tribes that were defended neither militarily nor spiritually against this agressive force cloaked as a new religion.

Islam means submission, and Muslims are very passive in their daily lives, leaving everything to whatever Islamic ruler dominates them, following a religion where God is unknowable and unpredictable and where the believer can only try to stave off the anger of the god or gods by following a detailed ritual law, and where the arbitrary and unknowable will of this god governs all things and your own efforts are of no avail and even offend your god.

There is nothing wrong with Middle Easterners that the removal of Islam wouldn't cure. Remember that some of these cultures (Persia, Babylon, etc.) produced great learning and scientific discoveries...all of which would last for only about two generations after their conquest by Islam, and then the culture would descend to being the usual Islamic pit of ignorance and superstition and anger.

Even in those rare cases where a conquered people was subjugated but use was made of its knowledge, it was because the form of Islam practiced by the ruler happened to be a syncretist variant, which was then determined by orthodox Muslims to be heretical. The result, then as now, was that it was actually the Muslims themselves who attacked and overthrew these more moderate rulers.

The root of the problem is Islam. What you believe does make a difference.