Political Islam in the Arab MENA Countries: The Evidence from the Arab Barometer (5) Data About the “Unword” of Middle East Research?

Abstract

Political Islam has been a major force across the MENA for much of the twentieth century. Reaching the zenith of their political ascendancy in the immediately aftermath of the 2011 Arab Uprisings, it is clear that Islamism is on the wane across the region. Opinion polls demonstrated that the Arab street, in particular the youth, are becoming more secular, less conservative in their attitudes and more suspicious of the role of religion in the public sphere. What is driving this disenchantment with Islamist parties relates to their aligning themselves with anti-democratic forces, the endemic corruption and nepotism they have demonstrated once in office, their inability to govern and their internal divisions. Our multivariate empirics of the support rates for Political Islam in the region relied on data from the Arab Barometer survey (5). If the people of the entire Arab world had a free vote in a referendum, the following rules and regulations still would gain an absolute majority: Against a marriage of a female with a man who does not pray. Terrorism against the USA is a logical consequence of US interference in the region. Males are better political leaders. The USA, the UK and Israel pose the greatest threat to the stability and well-being of the region. Banks should not be allowed to charge interest. More than a third of Arab opinion still supports, among others, the following contentions: In favour of Shari’a using physical punishments. A woman cannot be prime minister/president. In society, non-Muslims’ rights should be inferior. Rejecting neighbours – people of a different religion. Shari’a should restrict women’s role. From the Arab Barometer data, we constructed parametric and non-parametric indices of Overcoming Islamism and of Political Islam. The indices show a very high correlation with each other. The country values of the Index components are found in Table 7.2 . Islamism is defined as high values along our 24 indicators across the board. Table 7.3 reports our UNDP-type Index “Overcoming Islamism” based on the valid country-level Arab Barometer results with 24 variables, aggregated with equal weights. Tunisia, according to Table 7.3 , is the country whose population is rendering least support for Islamist worldviews, followed by Lebanon and Iraq. Yemen, Sudan and Algeria are the three Arab nations, whose population still lends biggest across-the-board support for the 24 Islamist positions under consideration here. We could show the close relationship between support of the most salient global Islamist leader today, Turkish President Erdogan, and Political Islam among the interviewed Arab publics. Support for Political Islam is also still very clearly connected to Anti-Westernism in the region. Politica...