Free Republic

In a nutshell, Islamic states must 1) teach more math, science, and business and less Wahhabism 2) be open and want to become part of the world community rather than try to destroy it 3) allow 50% of their population (females) to become full, productive members of society. With that approach, they may be able to progress out of the 1100's and into the 21st century.

Other countries have claimed for years that the US is at the bottom of the list when it comes to making humanitarian donations as a percentage of GDP (using data from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)). I was curious about this and visited OCHA's web site and found the numbers to be surprising.

Using the data for the 2003 Global Humanitarian Assistance, which includes Consolidated Appeals and Natural Disasters response, the USA accounted for 41.65% of total donations. This amounted to $3,277,941,061 US dollars. If one adds up the total US dollars donated by the individual countries of the European Union in 2003 as well as the European Commission and ECHO (European Commission), the amount comes to $1,812,547,419. GDP for the US in 2003 was 11 trillion and the EU was 10.522 trillion. http://ocha.unog.ch/fts/reports/pdf/ocha_18_2003.pdf

2002 data, US: $1,889,580,423 and EU-15: $1,691,434,884
2004 data: US: $989,156,831 and EU-15: $2,066,347,449

These are simply the numbers. I do not know if the 2003 figures include aid to Iraq. The numbers seem fairly comparable to me.