HN user
As an early player of minecraft I have always had a nagging question to ask: why did minecraft succeed while second life "failed"? In a sense they offer similar creative expression but with different gameplay philosophies.
The issue is one of awareness. Many of them found themselves abroad, mostly out of necessity, which is why you might not be familiar with their heritage. Or there might be other reasons where you don't interface with them.
To address your third point and name a few notable hackers of mideast and/or muslim heritage that come to mind off the top of my head that you might be familiar with, please see the list below. You likely use all these guys' hacks daily, so the contribution is definitely there. :)
- co-founder of apple (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs)
- founder of admob, omar hamoui (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdMob)
- taher elgamal, a cryptographer who brought us encryption standards like DSA and SSL /HTTPS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taher_Elgamal)
- in days past, al khawarizmi brought us algebra (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_ibn_Mūsā_al-Khwārizmī) In fact the word algebra originate from the Arabic al-jabr. So does the word algorithm, which is Latin for his name.
- there are many others, some famous and some nameless - hacking away - in all aspects of technology, medicine, science, etc. but you might not necessarily recognize them as being from that part of the world. Maybe even a coworker...
I hope that alters your perspective - at least somewhat - on the middle east, it's talent and it's role in hacker culture.