Oman's renaissance has surpassed forty years of maturity in the field of sustainable human and economic development. As it concludes the first decade of the 21st century, it embraces new directions that affirm the continuation of its progress and its openness to the future with steady, deliberate steps. However, the challenges of sound modernity, which successfully built a new Omani citizen nurtured by the renaissance over the past forty years, are fundamentally different from the modernization problems faced at the beginning of the renaissance with extremely scarce human and financial resources amidst an escalating civil war.

Therefore, this study provides an in-depth analysis of the sustainable human, political, social, cultural, and educational development challenges that the Sultanate of Oman is currently witnessing. After reaching a stage of stability and maturity, the new Omani has smoothly entered the realm of globalization without fear or an inferiority complex. They face new kinds of problems related to the nature of sustainable development, not the growth we analyzed in the previous book.

There is a qualitative difference in the nature of the documentation for this book, defining the transition from quantitative to qualitative accumulation, and the features of the analytical approach that goes beyond growth problems to highlight the mechanisms for maintaining sustainable development. This is a challenge faced by the Sultanate of Oman alongside all nations experiencing severe problems since the global capitalist system crisis in September 2008.

In past decades, the Omani renaissance has provided a significant model for balancing authenticity and modernity, and for developing various sectors of production, work, education, and services while preserving inherited Omani values. Today, it faces new challenges that sometimes intersect and other times diverge from the principles of the Omani renaissance—with its Arab and Islamic spiritual dimensions—and the tenets of the era of globalization with its one-sided technological cultures that pose significant risks to the cultures of developing nations, including the Omani people. The ethical and moral dimension is very clear in the Omani renaissance, which aligns with another cultural project to build a more humane globalization.

The Omani people, who knew how to protect their renaissance over the past four decades under extremely difficult internal, regional, and international conditions, and who struck a balance between authenticity and modernity, are today more aware of their past achievements and more determined to complete the march of sustainable development with Omani characteristics.

About the Author: Dr. Massoud Daher

• Holds a State Doctorate in Social History from the Sorbonne University, Paris I.
• Has been teaching at the Lebanese University since 1973.
• Appointed a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Lebanese University for the Faculty of Arts and Human Sciences in 1996.
• Participated in numerous Arab and international scientific conferences. Has been repeatedly invited as a visiting professor to universities and institutes in Tokyo, and as a visiting professor to Georgetown University in Washington.
• Served as a United Nations expert on development affairs in 2004 and 2008.
• Awarded the Abdul Hameed Shoman Award for Young Arab Scientists in 1983.
• Received the Arab Historian Medal in 1993, and the Arab History Medal from the Union of Arab Historians in 1996.
• Won the award for the best Arab book in humanities for the year 2000 from the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences.
• Awarded the Gold Rays with Rosette of the Order of the Rising Sun by the Emperor of Japan on April 29, 2010.

His works include: "Social History of Lebanon 1914–1926" (Beirut, 1974), "Lebanon: Independence, the Pact, and the Formula" (Beirut, 1977), "The Historical Roots of the Sectarian Question" (Beirut, 1981), "Lebanese Migration to Egypt - The Migration of the Levantines" (Beirut, 1986), "The Contemporary Arab Mashriq: From Nomadism to the Modern State" (Beirut, 1986), "The State and Society in the Arab Mashriq 1840–1990" (Beirut, 1990), and "The Arab Renaissance and the Japanese Renaissance: Similar Beginnings, Different Outcomes" (Kuwait, 1999), which won the KFAS award for the best Arab book in arts and literature for 2000.

Book Details:

• Publishing house: Dar Al-Farabi for Publishing and Distribution
• Number of Pages: 392
• Year of publication: 2010
• ISBN: 9789953715933