Islamic Countries & Cultural Barriers

In comparison to other developing countries, the Islamic countries have had more serious predicaments in the process of social, cultural, economic and political modernity and modernization. The considerable speed seen in South East Asian countries and East European countries is an indication of these regions modernistic capacities.
In such a framework, culture, cultural background and beliefs on the one hand and the nature of centers of power on the other are the two determining variables in transferring from pre-modernism to the period and process  of modernity. In this paper, these two variables are applied to Arab as well as non-Arab countries of the Middle East. The nature of cultural beliefs related to modernistic processes will be compared to such countries as Hungry, Poland, Malaysia and South Korea. The nature of the centers of power and their viewpoints are more important than cultural beliefs which can act as facilitators or barriers in the process of modernization. This demonstrates the extent that the centers of power in a country can comprehend the realities of global processes, and the extent that they find their profits in line with national benefits of their country. The paper will eventually conclude that the cultural barriers within a society and the culture and nature of centers of power are the two determining factors in the backwardness of Islamic countries on the threshold of the 21st  century.