No, Mr. President, we need to be told how to live.

At the Riyadh Summit, President Trump addressed Gulf leaders and said: “It’s crucial for the wider world to know this great transformation [in the Middle East] has not come from Western interventionists, or flying people in beautiful planes giving you lectures on how to live and how to govern your own affairs.”

This statement meant to distance him from the failures of Western interventionism. But with all due respect, Mr. President, you are wrong. Dead wrong. The Arab world has not built anything on its own. And it does not know how to live. Whatever modernity exists in the Gulf, it was imported, shipped in, copied, or outright bought from civilizations that did the hard work of discovering truth, building systems, and embracing universal human dignity.

The glittering skyscrapers of Dubai, the medical advancements in Riyadh, the universities in Doha, none of these sprang from within Arab tradition. They are not the fruit of centuries of internal reform, free inquiry, or philosophical wrestling. They are products of oil wealth spent on outsourcing progress. Western architects, Western political advisors, Western-trained economists, Western technology, all used to build a thin veneer of modernity on top of medieval social structures.

That worldview, rooted in reason, liberty, and the sacredness of the individual, is foreign to the Islamic ethos that has dominated Arab societies for 1,400 years.

Freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of belief, these are still dangerous ideas in all Arab countries. Because the Arab world has never been taught to value the individual above the tribe, the ummah, or the ruler. In Arab societies, you don’t have rights, you have permissions, granted to you by religion, status, or the regime. Dissent is not dialogue. It is betrayal.

Trump praised Arab nations for knowing how to live. But freedom, true freedom, isn’t something the Arab world has ever discovered on its own. When it appears, it’s because it was smuggled in through Western-educated elites or forced in through political necessity, not grown from within.

There is no deep-rooted Arab doctrine of equal human worth. There is no enduring tradition of pluralism. Citizenship is still often contingent on religion, sex, or tribal affiliation. Even in supposedly “advanced” Arab states, a Christian, a Shi’ite, or a woman will always be second-tier, tolerated, but not truly equal. Because the Arab world’s moral framework is not built on the intrinsic value of the human being, it’s built on hierarchy, honor, and submission.

The idea that a woman owns herself, her body, her voice, her future, is still a foreign concept. And it will remain so unless it is taught, modeled, and defended. Women’s rights in the Arab world, when exist, are not the fruit of enlightenment. They are the concessions of pragmatism.

Every achievement President Trump praised, from artificial intelligence labs to economic zones, was either bought or borrowed. Nothing original. Nothing transformative. Nothing revolutionary. Just rented progress draped over a crumbling foundation.

All humans need liberty. All humans deserve equal rights. The yearning to be free is not Western. It is human. There is no Arab exception to human dignity.

So, when we say Arabs need to be told how to live, we are not advocating imperialism. We are rejecting relativism. We are saying: you too deserve to live in truth, in freedom, and in peace. But you won’t get there by following your instincts. You’ve had 1,400 years to try. It hasn’t worked.

So no, Mr. President, they don’t know how to live. They’ve learned how to imitate. They’ve learned how to survive. But they’ve never learned how to build a society that values truth over power, reason over obedience, or the individual over the collective.