Now they are! German and Japan had to totally devastated before they stopped murdering people wholesale. But even being devastated, as a disciplined people, they rose up and became two of the top economies in the word within a few decades.
At the end of World War II the Arab world was the second wealthiest in the world after the West. Asia was destroyed and starving, with millions dying from India to China and to Indochina and Indonesia. Latin America was starving too. Eastern Europe was rapidly succumbing to the inept policies of communist regimes. Sub-Saharan Africa was a poor European colony rapidly falling into the hands of corrupt and sometimes cannibal dictators. The Arab world, instead, enjoyed relative peace, culture and wealth. Believe it or not, many Europeans chose to live in the Arab countries (today very few Westerners would want to move to an Arab country). Cities like Beirut, Alexandria, Casablanca, Algiers and Damascus were as cosmopolitan as the cities of southern Europe.