The Daily Star – Special Reports – Survey sheds new light on Arab views of West

The Daily Star – Special Reports – Survey sheds new light on Arab views of West
Survey sheds new light on Arab views of West
Data reveals striking evidence of anti-american and anti-british opinions among young

AMMAN: A pioneering survey conducted recently in five Arab countries reveals important and often-surprising data on how Arabs perceive themselves and major Western powers, along with striking evidence of increasingly extremist anti-American and anti-British views among Arab youth.

The survey, entitled “The Arab Street Revisited: Research from Within,” revealed important new insights into how Arabs differentiate between political and cultural values in the West, and also among the different leading states of the West. The surveyed Arabs also differentiate between Western political values which they admire and covet (democracy, justice, rule of law, etc.) and Western foreign policies in the Middle East, which they generally reject and criticize.

Full survey results and analysis will be made available soon on the center’s Web site (http://www.css-jordan.org/)

The survey was conducted in mid-2004 in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Palestine (West Bank and Gaza) under the aegis of the Center for Strategic Studies (CSS) at the University of Jordan. It included four samples in each country: a national sample of 1,200 respondents, a university student sample of 500, a business sample of 120 and a media sample of 120.

When “the West” was broken down into the U.S., U.K. and France, the survey broadly found that majorities of Arabs surveyed were critical of American and British foreign policies, but viewed French foreign policy positively. Culturally, however, Arabs in the Mashreq region tended to look positively on Western cultural values, to define these in positive terms – liberty, hard work, pursuit of knowledge, and wealth creation – and to see these as cutting across all Western countries. The Arab publics also have clear perceptions of their own cultural values, which they define largely in terms of family, religion and tolerance.

Dr. Fares Breizat, director of survey research at the CSS, told The Daily Star in an interview here that the survey results support a few clear conclusions: “Culturally, the Arabs of the Mashreq see one West which they admire, but politically they differentiate among the policies of Western states and the principles that guide them, broadly viewing the U.S. and U.K. as bad, and France as good. The Arabs, despite their anger at Western states’ foreign policies, generally desire all that the West represents and offers in terms of education, democratic political systems, health care, job opportunities, political values, tourism and emigration destinations, and other such variables.”

Other surveys in the entire Middle East and North Africa region since 2001 have also shown a widespread desire by Arabs for more freedom and democracy, and a clear rejection of authoritarian governance systems. This reaches 80 percent in Egypt, Morocco, Jordan and other societies, and is repeatedly reconfirmed by using more than one indicator in surveys.

Some indicators on attitudes to Western and Arab states were identical throughout the Middle East and North Africa, which Breizat interprets as “reflecting the same pan-Arab climate of opinion that is shaped around core issues, including Palestine and Iraq.”

He added that results from this and previous surveys conducted in Arab countries confirm decisively that “the problem of relations between the Arabs and the United States is political, not cultural or religious.”

He noted, for example, that Arabs tend not to see Christianity or the Crusades as a defining factor of Western policies in the Middle East, or as a key to the West’s self-definition of itself. The defining themes in Arab public perceptions of American and British policies in the Middle East are colonialism, repression, aggression and other such negatives, while France is perceived heavily in terms of its democratic ideals.

Despite the strong Arab criticisms of many Western foreign policies, the survey showed that Arabs also desire to strengthen political, cultural and economic ties between their countries and the West as a whole.

“The evidence indicates that people in this region are angry at American and British policies on the ground, but they respect Western values, and wish to cooperate and engage more with the West – yet they want to do this in a context of being treated with dignity and respect. The citizens of the Mashreq region want to be treated better by the West and by their own Arab governments. This is one of the conclusions we draw from the strong support for democracy in Arab societies, which is often higher than in many Western countries. The average Arab citizen feels he or she has been mistreated by their own government, by their own government under Western pressure, and by Western powers directly. That’s why respondents express a very strong drive for being treated with respect and dignity. They are almost desperate to enjoy a system that gives them voice to express themselves, and that recognizes their humanity, their existence, and their concerns.”

The survey provided a much more nuanced analysis of Arab realities than is generally reflected in the mass media or public discourse, Breizat said. One sign of this, he suggested, was that Arabs clearly express their political anger verbally and socially, in surveys and other means of expression such as dress and religious behavior; but they do not often translate their attitudes into political action. While Islamists are the backbone of anti-U.S. sentiments in the Middle East, this does not translate as a rule into support for their organized political parties.

In the 1995-2004 period, he noted for example, on average only about 10 percent of eligible voters actually voted for Islamist candidates, though much higher support for Islamist positions is reflected in the survey results. Over 60 percent of respondents in Jordan, Palestine and Egypt said Sharia (Islamic law) should be the “only” source of national legislation, whereas majorities in Syria and Lebanon said it should be one of several sources. Yet majorities in all five countries, with over 80 percent in Jordan, Palestine and Egypt, thought that ijtihad, or interpretation of Islamic law and doctrine, should remain open in their society today, indicating that these are not totally closed societies with fixed ideas of the world, and in fact they do accept new ideas.

Breizat interprets this survey evidence to mean that “if we open up the political systems, we would not necessarily have a problem of Islamists dominating and winning elections. Moderation would follow people’s sense of being treated with dignity by their own states and foreign powers. A self-correcting mechanism would kick in with democracy, preventing extreme results in elections.”

Extremist attitudes do prevail in some quarters of the region, though, as this survey reconfirmed. About two-thirds of respondents in Jordan and Palestine said that Al-Qaeda is a “legitimate resistance movement,” along with 41 percent in Egypt, but just 8 and 18 percent respectively in Syria and Lebanon. Yet 74 percent of Lebanese Christians also see Hizbullah as a legitimate resistance movement, and 56 percent say the same of the Palestinian groups Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. This and other survey evidence suggests to Breizat that “the issue of how people in this region feel and respond to events around them is not primarily religious or cultural, it’s political and national.”

The data shows that young Arabs are more radical than their parents. Eighty-four percent of people aged 16-24 years had a negative view of the U.S., compared to 73 percent of people aged 45 years or more. The survey also indicated that younger people were less likely to use the word “terrorism” to describe attacks such as Sept. 11, 2001 in the U.S., the 2003 bombing of the UN in Iraq, and bombings of Jewish targets in Turkey and Tunisia.

He also believes the survey evidence has serious policy implications for Arab governments and regimes, whose support for U.S. policies in Iraq and Palestine is increasingly divergent from public opinion in these same Arab countries.

“Public opinion in the Arab countries we surveyed sees the people themselves as losers from close ties with the U.S., while the governments in most of these countries rely heavily on American financial and military aid for their survival,” Breizat says. The survey evidence suggests that on the issue of relations with the U.S. and U.K., a more visible gap is opening up between some Arab leaders and their publics, especially because of policies in Palestine and Iraq.