As for why some countries mainly produce raw resources and otherwise lag behind, you may want to look into what's called the "paradox of plenty", or "resource curse". See also, "Dutch disease".
Countries with an abundance of natural resources (such as fossil fuels and certain minerals) have lower economic growth, lower rates of democracy, or poorer development outcomes than countries with fewer natural resources. They also lag in other domains even in the economy. It affected not just the Arabs, but also countries like Argentina, or in recent decades, Russia.
Even in Europe, a big (and largely unknown by the general public) brake on progress until the industrial revolution was that agriculture was so much more profitable. Poland for example, with its vast fertile fields, was hit particularly hard by that when much later the grain prices dropped.
Or even in Arab countries, before oil, they were sat smack in the middle of the silk road, and other choke points on the trade roads. Trade was a disproportionately higher source of income than anything else, so that's how they did. And were predictably hit HARD when the Portuguese figured out how to bypass some of that, and the Ming (mostly) closed the silk road when they went isolationist.
What I'm saying is that a lot of that has nothing to do with culture, it's just about economic and geopolitical stuff.
