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A limning of Arab thought and
opinion
By Dr James J Zogby
Who are the people we call "Arabs"? What do they
think about?
To the anti-Arab polemicists of the
world, the answer is simple: Arabs are driven by their
hatred of Israel and the West. Three decades ago, Golda
Meir, then prime minister of Israel, captured the racism
and perverse self-absorption inherent in this view when
she observed that she pitied the Arabs because while
Israelis had fun, enjoyed life and created art and
music, all the Arabs did was hate and make war.
The tragedy, of course, is that after decades of
anti-Arab public relations propaganda, this racist view
of the Arab world has taken hold. When we have conducted
focus groups in the United States, ordinary Americans
often ask this question about the Arabs: "Are they like
us?" What they are saying, of course, is that when they
think of an Arab, all that comes to mind is a
one-dimensional character - the "other side" of the
Arab-Israeli conflict - devoid of personality or complex
emotion.
Unfortunately that image is reinforced
when Arabs themselves fail to put "flesh on the bone" of
their own personalities. The fabricated notion that
Arabs are sitting at home all day watching 24-hour
Arabic satellite news broadcasts against Israel and
America is neither true nor helpful in projecting a real
image of the Arabs, one that expresses the full range of
their thoughts and concerns.
And so I return to
my question, "What do Arabs think about?"
In
April and May 2002, the Arab Thought Foundation
commissioned an eight-country poll of Arab public
opinion to learn the answer to that question. Teams
working with Zogby International interviewed 3,800 Arab
adults in Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab
Emirates, Kuwait, Jordan, Lebanon and Israel. The
results were released last week in Cairo at the first
conference of the Arab Thought Foundation.
What
we found in our study was that Arabs, not unlike people
all over the world, are focused on matters close to
home. When we asked our respondents what mattered most
to them in their own lives, they identified: the quality
of their work, family, religion and job security. They
gave the lowest rating to "external matters" like
political issues, foreign policy issues and leisure
time.
Our respondents, it appears, are focused
principally on issues related to their personal
security, fulfillment and well being. What matters most
are the things that affect them most directly: the
quality and security of their daily work, their faith
and their family. The ability to lead a meaningful and
productive life, the ability to provide for those whom
they love and the ability to protect and project the
values they hold most dear - these are the concerns that
define life and matter most.
In the same vein,
when we asked our 3,800 respondents to choose, from a
list of a dozen values, those that they felt were most
important to teach their children, once again the
choices focused on personal and family concerns:
self-respect, good health, hygiene, personal
responsibility, respect for elders, working to achieve a
better life. Far less emphasis was given to "externals".
At the bottom of the list were teaching creativity,
tolerance for views of others and respect for authority.
In other words, like people everywhere, when projecting
values to their children, Arabs want them to be secure,
responsible, healthy and prosperous.
All of this
translates into politics. When we asked our respondents
to rank, in order or priority, their top political
concerns, once again, the overall focus appears to be on
matters that affect personal and family life - but with
an intriguing twist.
Civil and personal rights
were consistently noted as the most important issues,
followed by health care. Also in the top group of
political concerns were "my personal economic situation"
and concern over moral standards. But ranked slightly
higher than both of these last two issues were concerns
with Palestine and "the rights of the Palestinian
people".
After more than three generations of
conflict, the betrayal and the denial of Palestinian
rights, this issue of Palestine appears to have become a
defining one of general Arab concern. It is not seen in
the same way as "the general Arab situation". Nor does
it appear to be viewed as an issue of foreign policy as
in "relations with non-Arab countries". Rather, for our
respondents, the situation of the Palestinians appears
to have become a personal matter lumped together in a
basket of other issues like civil rights and health care
and ahead of more general concerns like moral standards
or the state of their country's economy.
But note
in the accompanying table [below] the interesting
variations in rankings that occur among respondents from
the eight countries. While the overall top group of
political issues chosen by our respondents differs only
slightly from country to country, a look at the areas
where different priority choices do appear can reveal
some interesting results.
In Lebanon, for
example, in addition to the health care and the matter
of civil and personal rights, a high priority is given
by the respondents to their personal economic situation.
The Lebanese also rank issues of moral standards and the
economic health of their country at the top. On the
other hand, the Lebanese, who, in our other polling do
show concern for Palestinian rights, in this study, rank
this concern far below the others in its priority
ranking.
Somewhat the same is true in Kuwait,
where the issues of Palestine and the rights of the
Palestine people, while valued, rank only fifth and
seventh in order of priority. Conversely, in Saudi
Arabia and Morocco, the issues of Palestine and the
rights of the Palestinian people are given the two
highest ratings among respondents in both countries.
The only other significant differences in
priority ranking that bear mentioning occur in Kuwait,
Egypt and among Arabs in Israel, who all appear to share
a deeper concern for contemporary moral standards than
do respondents in other countries. For Kuwaitis, the
matter of moral standards is the highest-ranking
political issue, tied with health care, with the
question of civil and political rights following by only
a percentage point. In Egypt and among the Arabs in
Israel, the matter of moral standards is the
third-highest-rated issue.
Finally we polled
over 3,800 respondents about their non-work related
activities, and found that a significant percentage were
involved in religious activities and charity work; next
came involvement in sports and political affairs and
current events. The major exception to that overall Arab
pattern occurred in Jordan and Morocco, where
involvement in sports received a much higher score, and
in Kuwait and Egypt, where involvement in local politics
received scores higher than elsewhere in the Arab world.
The portrait that emerges from this study is of
an Arab world more complex and diverse in its attitudes
than many in the West understand it to be. While this
Arab Thought Foundation study was designed to promote
deeper Arab understanding and discussion, it is clear
that the results of the work will also be useful in
shattering the myth of the one-dimensional Arab. We can
tell Golda Meir's latter day disciples to get over their
self absorption.
What do Arabs think about? Like
people everywhere, they go to bed at night thinking
about their children and wake up worrying about their
jobs. When they think about Israel at all, it is because
they feel the pain it has inflicted on their people who,
if it were not for Israel's behavior, would be able to
live free and prosper, and able to worry about things
unrelated to Israel and what it is doing to them.
Dr James J Zogby is president of the
Arab American
Institute in Washington
DC.
Importance of
Political Issues
|
ISSUES |
Lebanon |
Jordan |
Kuwait |
Saudi Arabia |
UAE |
Morocco |
Egypt |
Arabs in Israel |
Overall
Rank
|
| Palestine |
7 |
4 |
5 |
1 |
5 |
1 |
3 |
4 |
3 |
Palestinian
rights |
8 |
2 |
7 |
2 |
3 |
2 |
5 |
4 |
5 |
| Civil/Personal rights |
2 |
1 |
1 |
3 |
1 |
2 |
1 |
2 |
1 |
| General Arab
situation |
9 |
9 |
9 |
8 |
9 |
8 |
9 |
8 |
9 |
| Relations with
non-Arab nations |
10 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
| Health care |
1 |
3 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
4 |
2 |
1 |
2 |
| Personal
economic |
2 |
6 |
4 |
4 |
2 |
5 |
4 |
4 |
4 |
| National economic |
5 |
7 |
7 |
7 |
7 |
6 |
7 |
7 |
7 |
| Country to meet
new challenges |
6 |
8 |
6 |
6 |
8 |
9 |
8 |
9 |
8 |
| Moral standards |
4 |
4 |
1 |
1 |
6 |
7 |
3 |
3 |
6 |
|
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