Improving the future of the Middle East may depend on saving its middle class -- an endangered group of educated and increasingly impoverished professionals -- says a UC Davis religious studies professor.

Despite the fact that Muslim values tend to reinforce middle-class values, a history of military dictatorships and foreign powers has weakened social as well as political bonds for the group, Keith David Watenpaugh says.

"They often live in countries where corruption is endemic, where preferences are given to the children of the elite, where merit isn't recognized -- where it is who you know that is more important," he says.

Watenpaugh, who lived in Syria for several years and is a frequent visitor to Iraq, says the people who do the "intellectual" work in the Middle East -- the white-collar professionals in business and government -- are experiencing an economic erosion of their status.

In response, many have created an "escape valve": immigration. "This creates a brain drain in the Middle East," Watenpaugh says.

The issues facing the middle class are also social. Many of the countries are hostile to institutions that maintain middle class life: civil society such as Rotary Clubs or the Girl Scouts and higher education.

If the U.S. could focus on improving middle class lives throughout the region, it would be helping the group create an engine for social change, Watenpaugh says.

"Trying to do something about the authoritarian nature of some of our chief allies in the region -- like Egypt or Saudi Arabia -- would go a long way in creating a breathing space for the middle class to be more fully involved in creating a democratic future for the entire Middle East," he says.

Watenpaugh, an associate professor of modern Islam, human rights and peace, this year published his book "Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism and the Arab Middle Class."