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[ElTorro]

http://english.dohainstitute.org/content/cb12264b-1eca-402b-926a-5d068ac60011

Results from the 2015 Arab Opinion Index, the largest public opinion poll of its kind in the Arab region, were officially released as part of a press conference in Doha, Qatar today. This year’s findings were based on 18,311 face to face interviews conducted in 12 separate Arab countries. [...]

The 2015 Arab Opinion Index is the fourth in a series of yearly public opinion surveys across the Arab world. The first survey within the Arab Opinion Index was conducted in 2011, using an aggregate sample of 16,192 respondents across 12 separate Arab countries. The 2012/2013 Arab Opinion Index relied on a sample of 20,372 respondents in 14 different Arab countries. The 2014 Arab Opinion Index was based on 21,152 respondents in 14 Arab countries. In addition, the 2014 survey included 5,466 Syrian refugee respondents living in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and in Northern Syria along the Turkish Syrian border.

The 2015 Arab Opinion Index is based on the findings from face to face interviews conducted with 18,311 respondents in 12 separate Arab countries: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt, Sudan, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania. Sampling followed a randomized, stratified, multi stage, self weighted clustered approach, giving an overall margin of error between +/ 2 % and 3% for the individual country samples. With an aggregate sample size of 18,311 respondents, the Arab Opinion Index remains the largest public opinion survey in the Arab world.

The report is available as a PDF and covers a wide range of topics. Some excerpts that I personally found interesting:

Respondents to the 2015 Arab Opinion Index define democracy in a variety of different ways. An overwhelming majority of 89% provided clear, meaningful definitions of democracy: 35% of the overall group of respondents gave answers which emphasized the safeguarding of citizens’ political and civil liberties; 26% defined democracy as the guaranteeing of equality and justice between citizens; and equal numbers (6% each) gave answers that emphasized either safeguarding safety and security or the improvement of economic conditions. Overall, the Arab publics are supportive of democracy: 72% of respondents are in favor of democracy, in contrast to 22% of respondents, who are opposed to democracy.

A further 79% of Arabs believe that democracy is the most appropriate system of government for their home countries, when asked to compare democracy to other types of rule, such as authoritarian regimes or representative democracies where electoral competition is limited to either Islamist or non Islamist/secular political parties, or to theocracies.

Overall, 62% of the Arab public would accept the electoral rise to power of an Islamist political group, provided it had an electoral mandate. This compares to one third of respondents who stated that they were opposed to the electoral rise to power of an Islamist political party. Meanwhile, Arab public opinion remains more divided (in nearly equal measure) on the question of an un Islamic/secular party rising to power through elections.

A majority of 57% of respondents expressed their fears – to varying extents –with regards to the rise of Islamist political movements, compared to 61% who expressed their fears of the rise of secular / non Islamist political movements. Only 36% and 33% of respondents, respectively, expressed having no fears with regards to the rise of Islamist and non Islamist political movements.

Similarly, a majority of Arabs are opposed to the employment of religion either by governments in order to win support for their policies, or by electoral candidates to win votes. In contrast, Arab public opinion is split almost in half in their attitudes towards the general “separation of religion from the state”, although there is a very slim majority in favor of the separation of religion from public affairs.

An overwhelming majority of 89% of the Arab public has a negative view of ISIL, with 3% expressing a “positive” view, and 4% “positive to some extent”. This represents an increase in the proportion of Arab citizens with a negative view of ISIL over the past year (from 85% to 89%).

While most Arabs describe themselves as religious, they nonetheless oppose edicts which pass negative judgement against members of other faiths, or which declare followers of varying interpretations of the same faith to be apostates. Most respondents, while religious, refuse to accept that non religious people are by definition bad people. Finally, most respondents do not discriminate on the basis of religiosity, between religious and non religious individuals, when conducting their social, political and economic/business interactions.

A clear majority of 75% of the Arab people believe that the Palestinian cause is one which concerns “all of the Arab peoples and not just the Palestinians alone”. Similarly, clear majorities across the Arab countries were opposed to any peace agreements already signed between Arab parties and Israel (including the Wadi Araba Treaty between Israel and Jordan; the Egyptian Israeli Camp David Accords; and the Oslo Accords signed by the Palestine Liberation Organization). Additionally, 85% of Arab citizens opposed their own country’s recognition of Israel. Of those respondents who stated that they would accept their country’s recognition of Israel, a significant proportion stipulated that such recognition should be conditional on the creation of an independent Palestinian state. Opposition to Arab recognition of Israel has remained steady for several years, and is consistent across the geographic expanse of the Arab region.

Results from the 2015 Arab Opinion Index reveal a complex set of public attitudes towards the revolutions of the Arab Spring. While 59% of respondents regard the Arab Spring and its attendant consequences to be negative, another 34% of Arab public opinion views the Arab Spring as a positive development.

 

[firehawk12]

I find it interesting that there's a fear of secular political groups. I suppose as in America, religious identity is an important part of the political process.

 

[ElTorro]

I find it interesting that there's a fear of secular political groups. I suppose as in America, religious identity is an important part of the political process.

Secularism is also negatively associated with secular/socialist dictatorships. That's something that liberals need to campaign against. One can argue well that secular governments are the only form of government that preserve those religious rights that—according to that survey—are important for most Arabs; specifically the right to subscribe to an individual interpretation of their religion. Only a secular-pluralistic government is one that does not try to impose one specific version of religion on an entire society.

 

[DirtyManos]

Democracy is worthless if it can't guarantee safeguarding the rights and dignity of all its citizens.

That only 26% emphasize that is worrisome.

 

[ElTorro]

Democracy is worthless if it can't guarantee safeguarding the rights and dignity of all its citizens.

That only 26% emphasize that is worrisome.

It's hard to judge these responses without knowing how specific the question had been, how much it called for a more elaborate definition, and how many hints it gave as to which aspects the definition should touch. For instance, one might perfectly well define democracy as "government based on the will of the people", without stressing any of the other things. But that would not mean that one does not emphasize it. Maybe that person just felt like giving a short answer.

 

[Toxi]

Is there a reason Syrian refugees were included in the 2014 survey but not in the 2015 one?

 

[gutter_trash]

Democracy is worthless if it can't guarantee safeguarding the rights and dignity of all its citizens.

That only 26% emphasize that is worrisome.

This.
Egypt was better off under Mubarak then freaking Morsi

 

[~Devil Trigger~]

This.
Egypt was better off under Mubarak then freaking Morsi

Democracy is largely learned, you have to go through the "Morsis' to get to the "Obamas".

Morsi's election should've been a learning experience, instead, people cowered back to the old ways, which created people like Morsi and worst.

they should've NEVER supported the coup against Morsi, its gonna be harder to get rid of the Sisi/Mubarak regime twice than to get rid of Morsi through elections.

 

[Stinkles]

Democracy is worthless if it can't guarantee safeguarding the rights and dignity of all its citizens.

That only 26% emphasize that is worrisome.

It's a poll, we had 30% of American republicans voting to bomb a fictional city from Disney last week. If anything this poll is encouraging.

 

[RustyNails]

This.
Egypt was better off under Mubarak then freaking Morsi

Then you have no clue why Egyptians revolted

 

[ElTorro]

Democracy is largely learned, you have to go through the "Morsis' to get to the "Obamas".

The main issue—which is also well reflected in the survey—is that the major homogeneous political block that is capable to rally supporters during democratic elections are the Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood. This fact will not change without the establishment of a secular/pluralistic movement that can rival the emotional attractiveness of Islamism, get rid of the negative connotations that are associated with secularism (Mubarak, for instance, described his government as democratic and pluralistic; which is a total joke), and—most importantly—mobilize numbers of people for elections and activism that can rival those of the Islamists.

It is also important to deconstruct Islamism and its propaganda. Because when you look at what these movements are promising in their propaganda, they do not sound as bad as they necessarily will turn out to be. They certainly sound better than the experienced reality of the secular/socialist dictatorships that are well known to Arabs.

 

[rambis]

Democracy is worthless if it can't guarantee safeguarding the rights and dignity of all its citizens.

That only 26% emphasize that is worrisome.

Eh what does this even mean?

If somebody says define democracy I'm honestly not saying any of that.

 

[AlphaSnake]

I generally find face-to-face interviews for polls of any kind to be complete BS. People will lie to another person's face, but will be far more honest if it were anonymous.

Just my personal opinion.

 

[Log4Girlz]

It's a poll, we had 30% of American republicans voting to bomb a fictional city from Disney last week. If anything this poll is encouraging.

Fuck Aladdin, hated that movie

 

[Stumpokapow]

I generally find face-to-face interviews for polls of any kind to be complete BS. People will lie to another person's face, but will be far more honest if it were anonymous.

Just my personal opinion.

The life-long statisticians and social psychologists that do public opinion research have documented this effect (Response bias is the general category of effects related to this, Social desirability bias is a specific manifestation of it.) and there are ways in question design, data collection, and analysis to help mitigate it. Most surveys code characteristics of the interviewer to help mitigate the issue--i.e. that people don't give systematically different responses to male or darker or older interviewers than they do to female or lighter or younger interviewers--or do parallel impersonal surveys to confirm there's no statistical difference in sample characteristics--or do followup waves and look at the level of stability. Another thing that's done is offering multiple wordings of the same question (test-retest reliability) which helps detect guessing or insincere responses or inconsistent responses. The concerns you're talking about are real, but it's very naive to just say the whole genre of work has no value because people way smarter than you or me have been thinking about this for a long time and working to respond to these criticisms.