America in Arab Eyes

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

1 Arab Attitudes Survey 2005, conducted jointly by the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development, University of Maryland, and Zogby International, available online at http://www.bsos.umd.edu/sadat/pub/survey-2005.htm. The Arab Attitudes Survey has been conducted annually since 2002, and polls between 3,200 and 3,900 respondents in total from Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In 2005, 31% of respondents reported a divided Iraq as their biggest concern, followed by 28% concerned with continued US dominition even after the official transfer of power.

2 Ibid.

3 Program for International Public Attitudes, University of Maryland, The Iraqi Public on the US Presence and the Future of Iraq – a WorldPublicOpinion.org Poll , (PIPA, 27 September 2006), http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/sep06/Iraq_Sep06_rpt.pdf.

4 Arab Attitudes Survey 2005.

5 Ibid.

6 Online al-Jazeera television poll, May 2006, among 36,000 Arabic speakers.

7 House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Foreign Policy Aspects of the War Against Terrorism , HC 573, available at http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmfaff/573/573.pdf.

8 Arab Attitudes Surveys, 2004 and 2005. In 2004 pluralities of respondents identified primarily as Muslim in Jordan (33%), Morocco (48%), Saudi Arabia (56%) and the UAE (66%), but not Lebanon (3%) or Egypt (17%). In 2005 pluralities identified primarily as a citizen of their country in Egypt (64%), Jordan (40%) and Lebanon (65%), but not Saudi Arabia (23%), Morocco (41%) or the UAE (27%).

9 An English translation of the letter is available at http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/library/report/2005/zawahiri-zarqawi-letter_9jul2005.htm.

10 Arab Attitudes Survey 2005.

11 PIPA, The Iraqi Public.

12 The Pew Global Attitudes Project, Islamic Extremism: Common Concern for Muslim and Western Publics: 17-Nation Global Attitudes Survey (Washington DC: Pew Research Center, 14 July 2006), http://pewglobal.org/reports/pdf/248.pdf.

13 Arab Attitudes Survey 2005.

14 Quoted by Reuters, 3 July 2006.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shibley Telhami

Shibley Telhami is the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, College Park, and Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution. This article was prepared for a Council on Foreign Relations/IISS Symposium on Iraq's Impact on the Future of US Foreign and Defence Policy, with generous support from Rita E. Hauser.