Most Arabs don’t trust their leaders and crave political and government reforms, but the brand of democracy practiced by the United States and other Western nations is not universally acceptable to them, according to a new survey.
The Dubai-based Arabian Business magazine and the Britain-based polling agency YouGov found that nearly three-fourths of Arabs questioned between Aug. 16 and Sept. 15 believe their leaders are “mostly corrupt politicians who destabilize the region.”
Meanwhile, 69 percent said they viewed “wider political participation and more democracy” as important issues, Arabian Business reported. Also, about 65 percent said they wanted more economic liberalization and 60 percent desire “lower state control over the individual,” the magazine said.
“It’s not surprising,” Joshua Teitelbaum, senior research fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel-Aviv University, told the Jerusalem Post, in describing the survey’s results.
“People are dissatisfied from corruption and from leaders who are in power too long. Look at Egypt. Everybody wants reform in the Arab world,” he said.
The survey came from a cross-section of the Arab world: 17 countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa, said the Post.
“We’ve all seen the progression of ideologies in Arab society,” added Wayne White, an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C. “They began with monarchies which produced corrupt dysfunctional governments. Those were driven out of office by socialist pan-Arab regimes, bringing great expectations that were not fulfilled in many ways: failed wars against Israel, inequitable distribution of wealth and failure of many other aspects of state policy and performance. Now you see people interested in something new.
“There is a genuinely heightened interest in democracy,” he told the Post.
The survey found that 53 percent of respondents were not satisfied with the level of freedom in their country, while 42 percent said they were satisfied and another 5 percent had no opinion.
But in a departure from American-style democracy, only 48 percent of Arabs polled said women should be afforded more equal rights.
And more than half of those polled – 57 percent – said they distrusted the United States “a lot” while 19 percent distrusted the U.S. “a little.”
“The U.S. is the vanguard of the West and the Arabs distrust the West as a civilization that challenges their values,” Teitelbaum offered. “The Arabs also believe the U.S. doesn’t support the Palestinian cause and they perceive the U.S. invasion of Iraq as crusader-like.”
The survey found 83 percent of respondents believed an Islamic state could exist within the parameters of Western-style democracy, while only a sparse 9 percent disagreed.
That did not surprise Teitelbaum.
“Without defining democracy many Muslims would say that Islam and democracy are compatible,” he told the Israeli paper. “Democracy for them means social justice and equal rights. So, Islam in a broad way could cover these things.”
White added, “Judging from all the polls, if you do actually achieve a thorough functioning democracy [in Arab countries], you’re probably going to have a government which will be more Islamic, more anti-American and more anti-Israeli.”
