With its neighbor Yemen enmeshed in a bloody civil war that has drawn in other nearby countries, with the regional troublemaker Iran situated just across the narrow Gulf of Oman, and with another neighbor, Saudi Arabia, facing a host of problems, the gulf nation has remained, in Daniel Pipes’s words, “an oasis of calm.” There have been no terror attacks, and not a single Omani has joined Islamic State. Pipes tries to explain this “most surprising country in the Middle East”:
Islam has three main branches: Sunni (about 90 percent of all Muslims), Shiite (about 9 percent), and Ibadi (about 0.2 percent). Oman has the only Ibadi-majority population in the world. Being a tiny minority in the larger Muslim context, rulers of Oman historically kept away from Middle Eastern issues. Part of the country was isolated mountainous desert terrain, part was focused on the seas, especially on India and on East Africa. . . . This unique remoteness from Middle Eastern problems, whether it be the Arab-Israeli conflict or Iranian expansionism, remains in place. . . .
A benevolent dictator, [Oman’s ruler] Sultan Qaboos bin Said dominates the country in ways alien to a Westerner. He serves simultaneously as prime minister and as minister of defense, foreign affairs, and finance, as well as supreme commander of the armed forces and police. . . . The Arab insurgency that began in 2011 reached Oman but, as in the case of most of the monarchies, was easily handled with some extra spending. . . .
As a democrat, I rue absolute monarchies. As a Middle East analyst, however, I acknowledge that monarchies govern far better than the region’s alternatives, mainly ideologues and military officers.
Read more on Daniel Pipes: http://www.danielpipes.org/17348/oman-a-middle-east-surprise