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Summary
Summary
Once a voiceless region dominated by authoritarian rulers, the Arab world seems to have developed an identity of its own almost overnight. The series of uprisings that began in 2010 profoundly altered politics in the region, forcing many experts to drastically revise their understandings of the Arab people. Yet while the Arab uprisings have indeed triggered seismic changes, Arab public opinion has been a perennial but long ignored force influencing events in the Middle East.
In The World Through Arab Eyes , eminent political scientist Shibley Telhami draws upon a decade's worth of original polling data, probing the depths of the Arab psyche to analyze the driving forces and emotions of the Arab uprisings and the next phase of Arab politics. With great insight into the people and countries he has surveyed, Telhami provides a longitudinal account of Arab identity, revealing how Arabs' present-day priorities and grievances have been gestating for decades. The demand for dignity foremost in the chants of millions went far beyond a straightforward struggle for food and individual rights. The Arabs' cries were not simply a response to corrupt leaders, but were in fact inseparable from the collective respect they crave from the outside world. Decades of perceived humiliations at the hands of the West have left many Arabs with a wounded sense of national pride, but also a desire for political systems with elements of Western democracies -- an apparent contradiction that is only one of many complicating our understanding of the monumental shifts in Arab politics and society.
In astonishing detail and with great humanity, Telhami identifies the key prisms through which Arabs view issues central to their everyday lives, from democracy to religion to foreign relations with Iran, Israel, the United States, and other world powers. The World Through Arab Eyes reveals the hearts and minds of a people often misunderstood but ever more central to our globalized world.
Author Notes
Shibley Telhami is the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution. He is currently a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a founding member of the Board of Directors of Education for Employment (EFE), and previously served on the Board of Directors of Human Rights Watch and the United States Institute of Peace. The author of The Stakes: America in the Middle East , Telhami lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Resentment of America and Israel is the "prism" that shapes Arab perspectives, according to this finely calibrated study of public opinion in the Middle East. University of Maryland political scientist Telhami (The Stakes: America in the Middle East) analyzes decades of his own polling data in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon, and the United Arab Emirates, supplemented by polls of Israeli Arabs and Jews and of Americans, to probe evolving views about the international scene and domestic politics and society. His survey partly confirms-and complicates-conventional views of Arab opinion. He finds, unsurprisingly, an overwhelmingly negative view of Israel and the United States, one that is energized by a preoccupation with public dignity and a "hunger for Arab power." But that antipathy, he contends, is based on policy rather than clashing values: most Arabs, he contends, like American pop culture, support women working outside the home, and favor democracy. Telhami weaves mountains of data into a lucid, thoughtful account of shifting attitudes, one that registers the impact of the Internet and Al Jazeera in changing attitudes and the growing influence public attitudes exert over government policy, especially since the Arab Spring. The result is an unusually rich portrait of the Arab worldview. (June 11) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Choice Review
This important study of Arab opinion by Telhami (Univ. of Maryland) is based mainly on polls conducted from 2003 to 2012. While the findings generally will not surprise most students of the region, the sophisticated polling methods and adept analysis provide solid grounds for rebutting persistent deniers. The findings relate to such matters as identity both with countries and as Arabs and Muslims; the importance of the Palestine issue (called "the Arab prism of pain"); and distrust of the US because of its policies, notably regarding Palestine, not because of any clash of values. The book also provides valuable findings on Arab attitudes toward Iran, making the often-overlooked distinction between people and regimes. The author considers the perception that authoritarian rulers are in cahoots with "Western masters" to be part of the reason for recent revolts, and stresses the renewed importance of taking public opinion into account at a time when transnational television and the Internet further limit government control over information. An essential work for students of Middle Eastern politics, this volume also will prove valuable to those focusing more broadly on identity and political culture. Summing Up: Essential. General readers; upper-division undergraduate students and above. G. E. Perry emeritus, Indiana State University
Kirkus Review
Arab public opinion, newly codified and relevant. In the wake of President Barack Obama's recent exhortation to young Israelis to look at the world through Palestinians' eyes, this work holds a prescient message at how recent changes in the Middle East have certainly opened the eyes of many Arabs, as well as favorably altered American attitudes toward them. The methodology of the polling undertaken by political scientist Telhami (Peace and Development/Univ. of Maryland; The Stakes: America in the Middle East, 2002) is key. After establishing his own credentials, he explains in detail how the polling was gathered over the last 20 years, then combined with significant changes over the last two years when the authoritarian screens in many of the countries were lifted. As the author writes, "it was obvious that the Arab governments' near monopoly of the media was crucial to limiting public discontent." He focuses mainly on six Arab countries as representative and in which to track public opinion--Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Lebanon, Jordan and United Arab Emirates--and divides the narrative into thematic areas of inquiry--e.g., Arab identity, the use of the Internet, the sense of empathy with others, the Palestinian-Israeli crisis, the Arab uprisings, opinion of the United States, Israel and Iran, and shifting attitudes about religion, women and democracy. Arab identity has been deeply shaped in relation to long humiliation by Israel and the West, and the "prism of pain" among all the Arab respondents was the enduring Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Hence, Arabs are still deeply suspicious of Western motives, choose France or Turkey in terms of model countries, and don't necessarily believe that the clergy should have a political role. An intriguing, revealing study of Arabs' changing views of themselves and the world as their countries open up--deserves a wide audience.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
For years, Western pundits and journalists who wrote about the Arab world attributed traits to the Arab peoples and what they thought about different issues based on superficial observations and preconceived notions about the region. Moreover, the authoritarian regimes that have governed the Arab world made it difficult to conduct scientific public opinion polling in much of the Middle East and North Africa. Since the Arab uprisings that began in late 2010, it has become incumbent to know what the average Arab thinks about different sociopolitical issues that affect their everyday lives. Political scientist Telhami (Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development Studies, Univ. of Maryland) is among a handful of scholars who have conducted numerous scientific polls to measure Arab public opinion on a variety of subjects. Drawing upon a decade's worth of polling data, Telhami has written a fascinating and extremely useful book on how Arabs see the world around them and what their aspirations are. The issues covered range from democracy and religion to foreign policy and relations with non-Arab regional states, such as Turkey, Iran, and Israel. VERDICT This book will be extremely useful for students of the contemporary Middle East as well as policymakers and journalists who deal with the Arab world.-Nader Entessar, Univ. of South Alabama, Mobile (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Introduction: Two Decades of Studying Arab Public Opinion | p. 1 |
| 1 Arab Identities | p. 17 |
| 2 The Information Revolution and Public Opinion | p. 37 |
| 3 The Network Americans Love to Hate: Al Jazeera | p. 45 |
| 4 Incitement, Empathy, and Opinion | p. 57 |
| 5 The Arab Prism of Pain | p. 73 |
| 6 How Arabs View Their Uprisings | p. 95 |
| 7 Trends in Arab Attitudes Toward the United States | p. 105 |
| 8 Attitudes Toward Iran | p. 129 |
| 9 Attitudes Toward Democracy, Women, and Religion | p. 145 |
| 10 Global Perspectives | p. 171 |
| 11 From 9/11 to Tahrir Square: The Arabs Through American Eyes | p. 183 |
| 12 Arab Public Opinion and the Reshaping of the Middle East | p. 197 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 213 |
| Public Opinion Polls | p. 215 |
| Index | p. 219 |
