Search results for: religion

Egypt: Key Findings on Public Opinion 2018-2019

Egyptians with different levels of income and education seem to have incredibly disparate perceptions of the Egyptian reality. Richer and better educated Egyptians are systematically more optimistic about the future of the economy, report higher satisfaction with the current government’s performance, and demonstrate higher levels of trust in the private sector. That Egypt suffers from inequality of income and opportunity…

Determinants of Arab public opinion on the Caliphate: Islamist elites, religiosity and socioeconomic conditions

What are the determinants of public opinion on the issue of the Caliphate in the Arab world? My answer to this question outlines the key role played by Islamist elites, religiosity and age in influencing Arab opinion on the issue of the Caliphate in three countries during the early Age of Islamism (1980s–1990s). I do so by using Binary Logistic…

The Mideast Pudding Loses Its Theme

“Take away this pudding! It has no theme,” Winston Churchill is said to have exclaimed when confronted with an undistinguished dessert. The Middle East today resembles one of those puddings, but Uncle Sam may not send it back. A themeless pudding is better than a poisoned one. It is hard to overstate how much the Middle East has changed in…

Voluntary Fasting, Involuntary Hunger: Food Insecurity and Ramadan in MENA

As citizens across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region welcome the holy month of Ramadan, concerns over economic conditions and food insecurity loom large. In 2022, Arab Barometer reported on the pervasiveness of food insecurity in several countries across the region. Four years later, little has changed for ordinary citizens. Indeed, prolonged economic struggles, coupled with conflict and…

The Arab Barometer

In 2005, Amaney Jamal, Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Politics and director of the Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice, and Mark Tessler, a political science professor at the University of Michigan, jointly launched the Arab Barometer, a project designed to document and record public sentiment through polling in countries across the Middle East and North Africa. Now…

Despots are pushing the Arab world to become more secular

…According to Arab Barometer, a pollster, much of the region is growing less religious. Voters who backed Islamists after the upheaval of the Arab spring in 2011 have grown disillusioned with their performance and changed their minds. In Egypt support for imposing sharia (Islamic law) fell from 84% in 2011 to 34% in 2016. Egyptians are praying less, too (see…

Why Is There So Little Shia–Sunni Dialogue? Understanding the Deficit of Intra-Muslim Dialogue and Interreligious Peacemaking

Despite a growth in fatalities resulting from organized violence with Shia–Sunni dimensions over the last two decades, in this study, we show, using existing data-bases on interreligious dialogue and peacemaking, that only less than two percent of the interreligious peacemaking organizations in the world are specialized in dialogue between Shias and Sunnis. Why is there so little institutionalized Shia–Sunni dialogue…

Survey: More Than Half of Arab World’s Young Adults Want to Leave

Lack of trust in Islamist governments, spike in non-religious identity are among chief reasons, report finds The results of a recent survey in the Arab world show that more than half of the region’s young adults are considering emigrating, and an increasing number of people are identifying as “non-religious.” The Big BBC News Arabic Survey, a joint assessment by BBC…

Arab Barometer for 2018-2019: A look at Morocco

The Arab Barometer for 2018-2019 has been published, “yielding fascinating insights into how Arabs feel about a wide range of issues” including corruption, economics, extremism, gender, governance, international relations, political institutions, religion, social justice, and youth. The Arab Barometer claims to be “the largest repository of publicly available data on the views of men and women in the MENA region,”…