BFF   

“All I want you to do (Ooh) for me
Is give it to me when you get home (Re, re, re ,re)
Yeah baby (Re, re, re ,re)
Whip it to me (Respect, just a little bit)
When you get home, now (Just a little bit)
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Find out what it means to me
R-E-S-P-E-C-T……..” Aretha Franklin (Respect)

Alajazeera reports on a poll of Arab “voters”, even in countries where they are not allowed to vote. The results indicate that Arabs mostly trust their armed forces (probably not for winning victories). It also shows that Arabs overwhelmingly consider the United States and Israel the biggest threats to the security of the Arab world. The survey, done by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Doha, shows that 77% of respondents trust their armed forces but that only about half trust their police forces and 57% trust the courts.
About 73% of Arabs consider the United States and Israel the biggest threats to the security of the Arab world but only 5% believe that Iran is a threat.
 

This 5% for Iran is interesting and represents an Arab dichotomy. It shows that in most of the vast Arab world, especially in countries where the mass of the Arab populations are concentrated, Iran is not seen as a threat. On the other hand, media of the Gulf GCC states are full of warnings of an Iranian or Shi’a “threat”. This indicates the degree of success of Saudi and Salafi sectarian propaganda in the tribal societies of the Persian Gulf states. Meanwhile, the bulk of the Arab world, in terms of area and population, has quite different views on this point. This is partly because the non-Gulf Arabs are not as swayed to Saudi propaganda as so many are in the Gulf and partly because of the absence of sectarian and tribal allegiances outside the Gulf region.

I still wonder about the unexpectedly (to me) high negative percentage for the United States; how accurate it is. It is possible that the negative view of America has shot up in recent months due to public statements of U.S. congressmen and senators and other candidates against Muslims and Arabs and the loud war threats being issued almost daily. These war threats are mostly aimed at Americans voters, but they are heard in the Middle East where they give the impression of an aggressive and contemptuous American political class in the mold of the old European imperialists. You can say that there is deep mutual contempt between most Arabs and the American political class. This also means that the views of the average Arab toward the American political class do not differ much from the views of the average American citizen toward the U.S. Congress. It can be summarized in “C-O-N-T-E-M-P-T”, and Aretha Franklin never sang that one.
Cheers
mhg


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