You are sleeping. Science itself originated in the Arab world. The Arab world is also home to the oldest civilizations in history. They (Semitic peoples and other native peoples to the Fertile Crescent/Arab world) invented science basically and almost everything that is shaping the modern day world from the alphabet, mathematics, astronomy, calender, time, agriculture, domesitcation of animals, first recorded religions, oldest cities etc.
Even in Najd (middle of Arabia) you had some of the most advanced Neolithic civilizations.
en.wikipedia.org
Problem is that it is not very known due to countires like KSA not putting any emphasis on their pre-Islamic history until recently. They really have nobody to envy in this regard.
Also Arabs were the dominating scientific community during the Islamic Golden Age.
en.wikipedia.org
Persians were closely behind as second.
Everyone else is far behind.
en.wikipedia.org
Ottomans/Turks in comparison are nowhere to be seen. No disrespect to them.
As for Arabs of today, they are doing really well, especially the GCC. They are doing better than 99% of all countries based on per capita data. This is due to huge investments by the governments, their huge wealth and focus on science. Of course a lot can be improved yet, but the improvements that they have achieved in the past 50-80 years are amazing.
I want to remind you that pre-WW2 most of Iran, Turkey, Arab world, Pakistan etc. was illiterate. It is a myth that somehow Arabs of modern era were worse off. Not true. It is just bias. The Muslim world in general was far behind the West 80-100 years ago in terms of literacy rates. We are still doing the catching up due to this.
More importantly Arab women in the GCC are doing better than the men. Similarly in Iran and in Pakistan. Contrary to Western propaganda.
