For Most Important Book of the Year, I nominate the “Arab Human Development Report 2003” issued by the U.N. Development Program.

Written by a group of 26 Arab scholars, this volume takes a candid look at why Arab countries have fallen so far behind in key areas of human development. This question is crucial, at a time when the United States is trying to remake Iraq into a democratic model for the region.

The authors of this book argue that the impetus for real Mideast change must come from inside their own society. “Such reform from within, based on rigorous self-criticism, is a far more proper and sustainable alternative,” they write, “in contrast to efforts to restructure the region from outside.” But “rigorous self-criticism” is rare in a region where leaders and publics tend to blame their troubles on outsiders, especially “the West.”

The authors of the “Arab Human Development Report” are trying to provoke just such an internal Arab debate.

“The report looks at the issues we were reluctant to discuss in the past,” says Rima Khalaf Hunaidi, the director of UNDP’s regional bureau for Arab States, and the moving force behind the volume. Its aim, she says, is “to change the attitudes of people and governments.”

The basic thesis: The Mideast’s problems are due to regional “deficits” in three critical areas: freedom, knowledge and the status of women. The 2003 work, second of four projected volumes, focuses on the knowledge deficit. It blames repressive governments, radical Islamist movements and a cultural resistance to innovation for creating the climate that holds Mideast countries back.

The statistics are shocking.

Newspapers in the Arab world circulate at less than one fifth of the rate in developed countries. Only 1.6 percent of the population has Internet access.

Arabic books represent less than 1 percent of world production (with a predominance of religious books), even though Arabs make up 5 percent of world population. Meantime, the translation of foreign books into Arabic is minimal.

Equally daunting is the paucity of scientific research. The number of research scientists and engineers working in the Arab world is about one third the global rate, and technology is largely imported. About a quarter of university graduates emigrate. Even the Arab language has failed to keep pace by absorbing new technological terms.

The report also confronts one of the Mideast’s touchiest subjects: the relationship of Islam to a “knowledge society.”

“An alliance between some oppressive regimes and certain types of conservative religious scholars led to interpretations of Islam which … are inimical to human development,” the report says, especially to freedom of thought and women’s participation in public life. It adds that “official and unofficial religious circles have also tried to muzzle freedom of opinion and speech. …”

As the report points out, this flouts a host of Koranic injunctions and a rich historic past in which Arab science once flourished in synergy with Islam.

Some Arab critics question what the reports can accomplish. Hunaidi replies that they take these issues “into the public discourse.” A few universities – in Morocco and Yemen – have dared to include the reports in their curricula.

“We managed to broaden the debate,” says Hunaidi, “on freedom, human rights and the quality of education.” Getting such topics onto the airwaves, including Arab satellite TV broadcasts, she says, “makes it harder to silence the discussion.”

Arabs who want to raise these issues now have a source of statistics – with a U.N. imprimatur – with which to answer their critics.

It is only when honest Arab debate flourishes about how to solve Arab problems that the Mideast will finally change.

Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer.