Arab street

The Arab street ( ar, الشارع العربي, ''ash-shāriʿ al-ʿarabī'') is an expression referring to the spectrum of public opinion in the Arab world, often as opposed or contrasted to the opinions of Arab governments.Friedman, Thomas
Under the Arab Street
''The New York Times'', October 23, 2002. In some contexts it refers more specifically to the lower socioeconomic strata of Arab society. It is used primarily in the United States and Arab countries.

While it is sometimes assumed, particularly in the United States, to have been borrowed from Arabic political discourse, its evolution has followed a circular course from Arabic to English and then back. Lebanese newspapers began referring to just "the street" during the 1950s; later in the decade reports in ''The New York Times'' used the term in English to explain Gamal Abdel Nasser's broad appeal not just in his native Egypt but across the Arab world. Later commentators added the "Arab" and eventually dropped the scare quotes to create the current usage, which became widespread in American media during the First Palestinian Intifada in 1987. Arab media began using it themselves a decade later.Regier and Khalidi, 26. However, its usage still differs between the two languages. In the Western English-language media, only Arab popular sentiment is referred to as the "street"; Arabic commentators use the expression in the same sense to refer to not just public opinion in their countries but in the West as well.Regier and Khalidi, 24.

Due to the many negative connotations attached to the use of "street" as a modifier, the use of the term in English has been criticized as fostering stereotypes of a population easily roused to violence. The "Arab street" thus alternately justifies the need for an authoritarian ruler, or constrains the potentially moderate actions of those rulers. In the wake of the Arab Spring early in the 2010s, the concept of the Arab street has been revisited and challenged. The revolutions that toppled governments have, to some, shown how deficient and outdated Western understandings of Arab public opinion, shaped by the concept of the "Arab street", had been and have even led some to suggest it no longer be used. Others, including some Arabs, saw the uprisings as vindicating the importance of public opinion in their cultures and changing the popular concept of the street within them.

Definition

Attempts to directly define the Arab street have usually equated it with Arab public opinion. ''New York Times'' columnist Thomas Friedman, who once covered the Middle East and frequently writes about the region, called it "the broad mass of public opinion" there in 2002, as distinct from extremist opinion, which he calls the "Arab basement". As of 2013, ''Collins English Dictionary'' defines "the Arab street" as an informal term for "public opinion in the Arab world."Arab street
, ''Collins English Dictionary'', 2013, retrieved September 4, 2013

Nevertheless, even as the term came into wide use, there was disagreement about its exact meaning. In 2002 a U.S. State Department official, reporting on a meeting between President George W. Bush and the leaders of Japan and Pakistan, said that the latter, Pervez Musharraf, had referred to the "possibility of trouble in the Arab street, whatever that is" over the upcoming invasion of Iraq. This uncertainty has led to confusion over what the term represents. During the same period of time, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld later recalled, Arab leaders urged him to make sure the operation went quickly as they "were worried about the 'Arab street' erupting in anger at the West's invasion of a Muslim country. I was skeptical of the idea that a monolithic Arab street existed ... but I did understand that popular discontent could cause them difficulties."Rumsfeld, Donald. ''Known and Unknown: A Memoir'', Penguin Group, New York, 2011, p. 4449.

According to a 2009 paper on the evolution and use of the term by professors Terry Regier and Muhammad Ali Khalidi, some of that confusion results from a frequent second meaning. encompassing the majority of Arab public opinion, they observe, another usage seems to associate it more specifically with "a presumed seething underclass within Arab society, one that is viewed primarily as a source of political trouble." In a 1993 exploration of the Arab street's existence, David Pollock of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy began by acknowledging these connotations: "The very name evokes images of mystery, mobs and mullahs; it sounds vaguely subterranean, if not sinister; and it is most often regarded in the West with a peculiar mixture of fascination, dismissal and fear."Pollock, David
The Arab Street? Public Opinion in the Arab World
1992, p. 1. Retrieved September 4, 2013.
In November 2001, a front-page story in ''The New York Times'' on the Arab street's rising power in the wake of the terrorist attacks in the U.S. two months earlier began by evoking the term's visual connotations and the corresponding power vested in it by fearful Western observers: "The Arab street: the well-worn phrase evokes men clustered around dusty coffeehouse tables, discussing the events of the day with well-earned cynicism between puffs on a hookah—yet suddenly able to turn into a mob, powerful enough to sweep away governments." Ten years later, columnist Edwin Black wrote on the Fox News website, after protesters in Egypt began calling for longtime president Hosni Mubarak to step down, something that had previously been unthinkable, that the leader had fallen afoul of the Arab street,

Arabic

In Arabic, the word for street (الشارع, ''ash-shāriʿ''This transliteration reflects the difference between sun and moon letters in Arabic, under which when the article ''al-'' is followed by certain consonants, among them ''sh''-", the "l" sound is elided.) is derived from a root whose other forms denote a place of entry or beginning, the point of a weapon, and law or lawfulness and legitimacy in both the secular and religious sense. Among those words are ''sharia'', the term for Islamic religious and moral law. ''Shāriʿ'' itself can also be used to refer to a legislator or lawgiver, and when used with the definite article ''al-'' in a religious context is a reference to God as the source of all religious law.

According to Regier and Khalidi, Arabic commentators use the term much as it is used in the West, when they discuss public opinion in the Arab world. However, they also refer to the "streets" of other, non-Arab countries in much the same way—"feelings of anger and shock are running very high in the American street fter the September 11 attacks, for example. And in contrast to the fear of political upheaval frequently implied by Western writers, their use of "the Arab street" often carries positive and respectful overtones, such as when '' Al-Ayyam'' praised "the great Egyptian street, which has always been the heart and conscience of the Arabs" in 1997. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah provided an example of both differences in usage when he praised "the Israeli street" for its reaction to the Winograd report on Israel's conduct of the 2006 Lebanon War.

History

"Arab street" arises originally from Arabic usage, but only became widely recognized through English adaptation.

English

In English, the earliest use of the word "street" in reference to the political role of popular opinion Regier and Khalidi found was that cited in the ''Oxford English Dictionary'''s (OED) entry on the word, where one of its definitions in the plural is "''loosely'' as the realm of the common man, and esp. the source of popular political support." Wyndham Lewis's 1931 book ''Hitler'', a defense of the German dictator that he later disowned, credited Hitler's political success in part to his "mastery of the street",, cited by Regier and Khalidi, 23–24. which the OED reported as the earliest use of the word in that political sense. It did not enter widespread use at that time.

The earliest use of "street" in a political context that Regier and Khalidi could find was a 1950 editorial in the Lebanese newspaper '' An-Nahar'':

"The street," they wrote, "is here conceived as an aggrieved everyman, manipulated and exploited by the political class," a sense that later manifested itself in Western discourse.Regier and Khalidi, 25.

This usage made its debut in the American media early in 1957. ''Times'' correspondent Hanson Baldwin, in an article on the personalities in the Middle East in the wake of the previous year's Suez Crisis, focused on Gamal Abdel Nasser, president and prime minister of Egypt. Baldwin credited Nasser's success to "his appeal to 'the street', which
carries great political power in the Arab world." He also inaugurated the concept of the street as a source of political danger to established hierarchies, saying Nasser's prestige was "probably at a new high with the Arab street mobs, by which Arab governments are so often made or broken." Two years later, the title and subtitle of a '' Times Magazine'' article made explicitly clear that the Arab mob and the street were related: "Power of 'The Street' in the Arab World; Here is an analysis of that frightening phenomenon, the mob, and the role it plays in the contest between freedom and tyranny in the Mideast."Regier and Khalidi, 21–22.

Nasser himself, in speeches, often cited not the street but "''al-gamāhīr''"This transliteration reflects the pronunciation of the Arabic letter ج, often given the value , equivalent to an English soft "j", as or an English hard "g", in Egyptian Arabic. (الجماهير) as his political base. The '' Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic'' defines it as "the masses", or "the people"; in the singular it can mean "the public" or a crowd or throng of people. Another form of the same root is ''jumhūrīah'', the word for republic.Wehr, 163.

''Gamāhīr'', rendered in English as "the masses", carries Marxist overtones of class struggle. Northwestern University professor Joe Khalil, who studies the Arab media, explains that it can "refer to everything from the indoctrinated members of a political party to a group of enthusiasts at a pop performance." Within a political context it most often denotes "several groups of people bound together by a common activity or ideology and easily recognizable within a larger population." The term, like the Pan-Arabism it was also associated with, gradually fell into disuse after Egypt was defeated by Israel both in the Suez Crisis and the Six-Day War of 1967.

"Street" was first grammatically modified by "Arab" in English in a 1970 article in ''The Review of Politics'', a political science journal. The writer, Robert Sullivan, alluded to the role of "radio propaganda aimed at mobilizing the Arab 'street'" during military conflicts. Seven years later, another journal article by Steve J. Rosen argued that Israel's development of nuclear weapons would lead to "a revolution of declining expectations in the Arab 'street.'"

Regier and Khalidi speculate that the use of scare quotes by both Rosen and Sullivan suggest that they are using a term not familiar to them, something they may have adapted from a foreign language. Since both of them were academics specializing in Middle Eastern studies, it could be presumed that they had at least a reading knowledge of Arabic and were familiar with the term's use in Arabic media in the region, Regier and Khalidi argued. The two further speculated that Rosen, who often took strongly pro-Israel positions and later became policy director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, may have also perhaps picked up the term from Israeli media and scholars, as the "street" terminology for popular opinion is also used sometimes in Hebrew.
An Israeli attorney's 1987 comment to ''The Christian Science Monitor'', that his country had never "tried to root out the PLO in the Arab street" was the first modern use in its present sense without the scare quotes. By the end of the decade it came into wide use in both American academic and popular media, as coverage of the First Palestinian Intifada dominated news from the region. This may have been the result of geopolitical shifts taking place at the same time. ''The New York Times'' language columnist William Safire anonymously quoted a Middle East expert who told him that before the late 1980s the term "Arab masses" had been used instead. "With the eclipse of the Soviet Union, that phrase disappeared because thad too much of a Marxist–Soviet–Communist tilt to it." In his 1992 paper on the Arab street as a political phenomenon, David Pollock uses "Arab masses" only once, and in quotes.Pollock, 29.

Arabic

The first use of the term "Arab street" in Arabic media occurred in 1997. The two researchers were not certain whether it had seen any use prior to that year as the database they used only went as far back as 1995. It has become quite common in Arabic media since then, suggesting, according to Regier and Khalidi, that a term created in English from a borrowed Arabic term has been "re-imported" into Arabic.Regier and Khalidi, 26.

Criticism

Negative connotations

While sometimes the American media used "Arab street" as to be interchangeable with "Arab public opinion," suggesting rationality and calm, Regier and Khalidi found that most uses carried the connotations of incipient unrest. "We propose that a central association of the ''Arab street'' is indeed that of a volatile potential mob, dangerous to the established order of Arab states, and thus to any agreements Western powers may have with those states." While users may not always have intended it that way, in many cases they did.Regier and Khalidi, 13–15.

They identified three factors that gave rise to these connotations. First, other common English phrases such as " man in/on the street", " street smart" and " the word on the street" suggest the street is associated with uneducated and possibly misinformed opinion. The street is further associated with illegality through terms like "street crime" and the "street value" of contraband such as illicit drugs. Both of these, Regier and Khalidi observe, help strengthen the sense that the Arab street's opinions are uninfluenced and uncontrollable by any official source or body.Regier and Khalidi, 16–17.

Lastly, terms like "street person" for one who is homeless and " streetwalker" for a prostitute link the street to desperate personal circumstances. Regier and Khalidi note that this has historical connections to the term " street Arab", for a homeless child, now out of regular use but still encountered by readers of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes mysteries, where the titular character relied at times on a network of such individuals as informants. Edward Said, a Palestinian-born professor of English literature at Columbia University who frequently spoke and wrote on behalf of his people's cause, along with casting a critical eye on Western "orientalism" and how it affected perceptions of non-Western cultures such as the Arab world, explicitly and critically drew the connection between the two terms, they note, quoting him as saying:

Regier and Khalidi write that the view of the Arab street, and by extension all Arab public opinion, as that of a mob always poised to rise violently, does Western publics a disservice. Not only is it inaccurate, it confronts them with "something quite unlike Westerners' conception of their own publics ... It has the potential to contribute to an ongoing misreading of the Arab public among U.S. readers."

Harmful to Arab-American relations

In late 1990 after Iraqi forces under Saddam Hussein invaded and occupied Kuwait, ultimately leading to the Gulf War, American commentators and Middle East experts expressed concern about the possible consequences of the Arab street in the region rising up in support of Saddam against their own governments, many of whom (particularly Egypt) had joined the military coalition led by the United States. This did not happen when the actual war began, nor for the hundred days of combat before Iraqi forces retreated and surrendered. A year later, in 1992, David Pollock of the United States Information Agency (USIA) wrote a lengthy paper arguing that those commentators had seriously misunderstood the Arab street and, by extension, all Arab public opinion.

As applied, Pollock saw two predominant conceptualizations of the Arab street. One, he called the "underrated" school, which usually claimed that "in the absence of Arab democratic institutions public opinion in those countries is politically irrelevant."Pollock, 3. Other members of that school went further, claiming that Arab public opinion was "unknowable, and therefore unfit for serious discussion." A small minority considered the Arab street a concept bound with Pan-Arabism, by then largely discredited, and by extension similarly irrelevant.Pollock, 7–8.

On the opposite side was what he called the "exaggerated" school, which saw the Arab elites as "already hopelessly alienated from the masses ... As a result, popular revolution (or at least paralyzing instability) is always around the corner in the Arab world." Proponents argued that, for that reason, the U.S. should turn its attention towards those who might hold power in a more democratic Arab world; otherwise, its relationships with Arab states will always be tenuous and unstable.Pollock, 9–10.

A key foundation of the "underrated" school's argument, Pollock wrote, was the tendency of the media in most Arab countries to be under state control or influence to a greater degree than in the West and therefore filtering information to the public and not reporting public opinion accurately, an experience informed by contemporary events in Eastern Europe. However, even in Syria, a coalition country where the government had the greatest control over the media, citizens still listened to the BBC
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