ANN ARBOR—A University of Michigan analysis of rare public opinion data from the Arab world shows that most people support peace with Israel and favor democracy as the best form of government.

Moreover, men and women who are more religious and whose attachment to Islam is strong are just as likely as less religious individuals to favor compromise with Israel and support democracy, according to Mark Tessler, a political scientist at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR), the world’s largest academic survey and research organization. For the new study, Tessler and U-M doctoral student Dan Corstange reviewed findings from many recent opinion surveys of ordinary men and women in Arab and Islamic countries. Some of the surveys were conducted by Arab scholars while others were conducted by U.S. polling firms and academic institutions, including the ISR. Their analysis will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Social Affairs.

One 2001 survey, based on a random sample of 1,318 West Bank and Gaza residents, found that three times as many people supported reconciliation with Israel as opposed it and that supporters were just as likely as opponents to be religious or very religious. Another survey of 2,756 Egyptians, conducted in 2000 as part of the ISR World Values Survey, showed that most Egyptians favor democracy and that there is virtually no difference in the attitudes of more and less religious people. A third survey of 1,223 Jordanians, also conducted as part of the ISR World Values Survey, found that more than 70 percent felt that Islamic leaders should not influence politics, compared to less than 20 percent who felt religious leaders should, and that views about this issue are almost identical among men and women with different levels of mosque attendance and involvement in religious activities.

“Religion and culture are not fostering antipathy to Western norms and institutions,” said Tessler. “In fact, political and economic factors are much more important than religion in accounting for variance in attitudes toward politics, governance and international relations. “At a time of increasingly strained relations between the U.S. and the Arab world, it is particularly important to recognize the evidence that religious attachments do not foster the kinds of militant and totalitarian attitudes among ordinary people in the Arab world that some in the West allege,” Tessler said. Funding for the research and analyses came from a variety of sources, including the Ford Foundation, the U.S. State Department and the National Science Foundation.

Related links: 

• See Charts
• U-M Institute for Social Research
• Mark Tessler
• ISR World Values Surveys

Established in 1948, the Institute for Social Research (ISR) is among the world’s oldest survey research organizations, and a world leader in the development and application of social science methodology. ISR conducts some of the most widely-cited studies in the nation, including the Survey of Consumer Attitudes, the National Election Studies, the Monitoring the Future Study, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the Health and Retirement Study, the Columbia County Longitudinal Study and the National Survey of Black Americans. ISR researchers also collaborate with social scientists in more than 60 nations on the World Values Surveys and other projects, and the Institute has established formal ties with universities in Poland, China, and South Africa. Visit the ISR Web site at www.isr.umich.edu for more information. ISR is also home to the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), the world’s largest computerized social science data archive.