A recent study done by the United Nations found that only 10,000 books have been translated into Arabic in the last 1,000 years, which is roughly the same as the amount of texts translated in Spain last year alone.

The biggest obstacles to the translation of Western texts into Arabic is a lack of available translators as well as a significant lack of interest in any books that are not spiritual. 

Although to many this may seem like a serious error in the culture of any people, a lack of want for outside information, this kind of thinking must be counterbalanced by other thoughts. An easy way to understand the lack of want for Western texts is that these people do not want their culture tainted by any outside forces.

This used to be a well practiced form of culture conditioning; including the closing of borders, closing of thought patterns, closing of anything that would come in from the "outside world". Tibet and Nepal were both completely closed to outsiders until recent times, and while some would argue that this is a backwards way to live, I would tend to disagree as a principle.

While the principle is decidedly xenophobic in nature, its purpose seems well beyond simple prejudice. A people attempting to sustain their culture believe in their culture, their way of life and wish for it to stay this way.

While Western thinking demands a completely open attitude towards books and literature, these people have decided that their texts are entirely enough for their own culture. To think that because a people do not have the desire to be able to purchase discount books online doesn't mean they are a backward people, it simply means they are a different people.

The efficacy of this type of thinking can be debated, but I believe all people can understand at least a portion of this thinking. Americans are well known xenophobes, again for the simple reason that they love their culture and would rather it stay the same.

So while the Arab world does not have access to Western texts, they apparently have almost no demand for such things simply because they believe their culture to be full and complete without adding another's culture to it.

This simple fact alone would explain much in why Western and Arabic nations seem so far removed from each other. The latent culture gap ensures that although we may understand each other as human beings, we may never understand each other as the cultural gap is not shrinking, but growing.