JUAN COLE - Super-Majority of Arab Youth in New Poll say Religion too Important in Public Life
A just-released survey of
youth (aged 18-24) in 16 Arab countries has found that 66% of them say
there is too much religion in public life. Further, fully 79%,
almost 4 in 5, say that the Arab world desperately needs to reform its
religious institutions. Fully half said that
religion is a brake on development in the Arab world.
Assuming that they
don’t change their minds as they age, members of the Gen-Z appear likely to
craft societies that are significantly less religious than current ones. The figure came as a
surprise to me. When I was researching The New Arabs, I noticed
that Lebanese and Tunisian youth were significantly less observant than their
elders. My colleague Mark Tessler and his partners found that in Sunni Iraq in
2012, three-quarters of the respondents wanted less religious influence on
politics (which makes it extremely ironic that they were two years later taken
over by ISIL). But Egyptians, for instance, reported themselves very religious.
It is possible that
the events of the Arab Spring and especially episodes such as the unpopular
Muslim Brotherhood administration in Egypt 2012-2013, the turn of Syrian rebels
to extremism, and the rise and dramatic fall of ISIL have pushed this cohort of
youth more toward a secular vision of society and encouraged skepticism of
religious institutions. It is also possible
that the Youth Revolts of 2011-2013, and now again in 2019 in Algeria and the
Sudan (the latter was not surveyed) made the youth more skeptical of religious
institutions, many of which sided with the dictators.
Another possible
contributor to this change is the influence of Muhammad Bin Zayed of the United
Arab Emirates and Muhammad Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia. They have spent a lot of
money and political capital trying to undermine the Muslim Brotherhood, and
perhaps they have succeeded beyond their widest imaginings. The entire Egyptian
government is ranged against that kind of populist political Islam, and
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has been demanding reforms of Sunni religious
institutions in Egypt.
Another finding: in
2015-2019, the youth who said social media is a significant source of news went
from a quarter to 80%. As for the problems
facing youth in Arab societies, they ranked rising cost of living at 56%, then
unemployment at 45%. Only about a quarter worried about lack of democracy.
The web site says the
survey “covers five of the Gulf Cooperation Council states (Bahrain, Kuwait,
Oman, Saudi Arabia and the UAE), North Africa (Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco,
and Tunisia), the Levant (Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and the Palestinian
Territories) and Yemen. The survey did not include Syria due to the civil
unrest in the country.”
Typically about 200
persons were interviewed from each country, geographically and gender-wise
balanced for a representative sample. Egyptians and Saudis were slightly
over-represented, making the findings about views of religion even more
significant... read more:
