Sharabi argues that the historical patriarchal authority structure of the Middle East has not succumbed to modernization and disappeared or even been fundamentally revised. Instead it lives on as neopatriarchy: an inherited patriarchal authority which manifests itself at the level of the state and the family in the form of modernity, while retaining the essence of patriarchy in family, clan, and religion.

At the heart of the problem is a petty-bourgeois élite that has frozen further political and social development by frustrating the emergence of a full-blown bourgeois class or an empowered proletariat. Disquieting forces such as sexism and fundamentalism become the end result of the overall societal stagnation.