The World Through Arab Eyes: Arab Public Opinion and the Reshaping of the Middle East - Hardcover

Telhami, Shibley

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465029833 ISBN 13: 9780465029839

Publisher: Basic Books, 2013

Synopsis

Once a voiceless region dominated by authoritarian rulers, the Arab world seems to have developed an identity of its own almost overnight. The series of uprisings that began in 2010 profoundly altered politics in the region, forcing many experts to drastically revise their understandings of the Arab people. Yet while the Arab uprisings have indeed triggered seismic changes, Arab public opinion has been a perennial but long ignored force influencing events in the Middle East.

In The World Through Arab Eyes, eminent political scientist Shibley Telhami draws upon a decade's worth of original polling data, probing the depths of the Arab psyche to analyze the driving forces and emotions of the Arab uprisings and the next phase of Arab politics. With great insight into the people and countries he has surveyed, Telhami provides a longitudinal account of Arab identity, revealing how Arabs' present-day priorities and grievances have been gestating for decades. The demand for dignity foremost in the chants of millions went far beyond a straightforward struggle for food and individual rights. The Arabs' cries were not simply a response to corrupt leaders, but were in fact inseparable from the collective respect they crave from the outside world. Decades of perceived humiliations at the hands of the West have left many Arabs with a wounded sense of national pride, but also a desire for political systems with elements of Western democracies -- an apparent contradiction that is only one of many complicating our understanding of the monumental shifts in Arab politics and society.

In astonishing detail and with great humanity, Telhami identifies the key prisms through which Arabs view issues central to their everyday lives, from democracy to religion to foreign relations with Iran, Israel, the United States, and other world powers. The World Through Arab Eyes reveals the hearts and minds of a people often misunderstood but ever more central to our globalized world.

About this title

About the Author

Shibley Telhami is the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution. He is currently a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a founding member of the Board of Directors of Education for Employment (EFE), and previously served on the Board of Directors of Human Rights Watch and the United States Institute of Peace. The author of The Stakes: America in the Middle East, Telhami lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.

From the Inside Flap

The Arab world is changing with astonishing speed. The protests of 2011 toppled autocrats and installed in their place governments of varying levels of stability. While the self-immolation of a Tunisian fruit vendor precipitated revolution, demographic and economic challenges have long simmered below the surface of outwardly stable regimes throughout the Arab world. Governments are losing their ability to unilaterally shape the national narrative. An increasing percentage of the population is young and dissatisfied with its prospects for economic security. Greater numbers than ever have access to the Internet, text messaging, social media and satellite TV. And despite widespread anger with U.S. policies, everyday Arabs have embraced aspects of Western culture and want Western-style freedoms in their own countries.

Over the past decade, Shibley Telhami has conducted an annual opinion poll of the Arab world, and in The World Through Arab Eyes he applies his unparalleled knowledge and expertise to the events of the last two years. Drawing on a broad array of voices from the Arab world, he plumbs the depths of the Arab psyche to analyze the forces and emotions behind the uprisings. In all of the countries that have experienced protests, the demand for dignity has been foremost. The protestors display a potent national pride nursed through decades of perceived humiliations at the hands of the West, and at the same time desire a Western democratic political system. This complex relationship is key to comprehending the seismic changes in Arab politics and society, as well as to appreciating why American perceptions of the Arab world shifted so drastically in the wake of the Arab Spring. The World Through Arab Eyes is vital for anyone who wants to understand the vast implications the Arab uprisings have had and will continue to have for our world.

Edition details

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0465029833
• ISBN 13: 9780465029839
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240