Search results for: religion

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…

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…

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…

A long way to liberalization, or is it? Public perceptions of women empowerment in the Middle East and North Africa

This paper explores the question of what explains public opinion of women empowerment in the Middle East and North Africa. Muslim societies have often been accused of conservatism toward empowerment, stripping women of equal access to education and opportunities. However, many predominantly Muslim societies in the MENA region seem to be on the way to implement change to provide women…

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…

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,”…