Introduction: People and Their Issues
1. For example, such different historical formations as democracy, communism, and fascism are made possible by varying combinations of class coalition, state structure, and the sequence of commercialization of agriculture and industrial development (Moore 1966); the outbreak of revolution is an outcome of the varied structural relations between social classes, between social classes and the state, and between states in the international context (Skocpol 1979) or of the variations in the relations of cultivators and noncultivators to the means of production (Paige 1975).
2. An example of structural reductionism of human agency is Bourdieu’s conception of the subjectivity of the working class: “the working class internalizes that its life chances are limited; that is, the objective probabilities at the systems level are subjectively internalized” (Calhoun, LiPuma, and Postone 1993, 24).
3. Gelfand’s classification parallels Durkheim’s typology of anomie versus fatalism. The former is the pathological consequence of a loose social structure and societal normlessness, while the latter is the consequence of a tight structure characterized by “excessive regulations,” such that, as Durkheim noted, “futures [are] pitilessly blocked and passions violently choked by oppressive discipline” (cited in Dohrenwend 1959, 467).
5. In one of her later works, Ahmed acknowledges that the veil is in effect “a statement of a commitment to a belief in men as the natural and God-ordained authorities” (Ahmed 2005, 165).
6. Muhammad Ali was an ambitious officer who had come to Egypt in 1801 with an Albanian detachment in a Turkish expeditionary force to repel the French (Vatikiotis 1980).
7. The Description de l’Egypte is the subject of “Napoleon and the Scientific Expedition to Egypt,” an online exhibition presented by the Linda Hall Library, Kansas City, MO. https://napoleon.lindahall.org/learn.shtml. Retrieved June 11, 2018.
11. For a concise discussion of the problems and issues related to the comparative survey project that produced the data used in this book and the broader problem of conducting surveys in the Middle East, see de Jong and Young-Demarco (2017).
1. Expressive Individualism
1. A single measure of expressive individualism was constructed by, first, recoding the variable on the basis of marriage into 1 and 4, where love is coded as 4 and parental approval as 1. Then the child qualities index was transformed so that the range was from 1 to 4 rather than 0 to 4, using the following formula: ((childquality + 1)*(0.75)) + (0.25). Then the three indicators were averaged. To reduce the size of the questionnaire for Tunisia, the question about child qualities was excluded from that questionnaire, so the expressive individualism index that was created includes only variables related to the basis for marriage and a woman’s freedom to dress as she wishes.
2. Using the pooled data, a single factor for expressive individualism had an eigenvalue of 1.47, explaining 49 percent of variance, and a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.44.
3. Because there is no data on child qualities for Tunisia—and thus no child qualities index—Tunisia’s overall measure of expressive individualism is not comparable with those of the other six countries.
2. The Social Status of Women and Gender Equality
3. Secular Politics, Liberal Values, and National Identity
1. Discursive space is defined as an interstitial capacity or opening in a belief system that allows its practitioners to detect, recognize, discuss, and sometime reconcile inconsistencies in that belief system (Moaddel and Karabenick 2013).
2. Attitude toward democracy was not used as an indicator of secular politics because this measure, while important, has different meanings for different secular and religious groups in the Middle East and North Africa. For religious groups, in particular, democracy basically means participation in elections without necessarily believing in freedom of expression (which includes the freedom to criticize religion) and separation of religion and politics. While attitude toward democracy is positively linked to the secular politics index, the measure has inconsistent and weak relationships with the indices of expressive individualism and gender equality across the seven countries.
3. To maintain consistency, the range of the last variable was converted from 1 to 5 points to 1 to 4 points by multiplying this variable by 0.75 and then adding 0.25 (i.e., 1 × 0.75 + 0.25 = 1 and 5 × 0.75 + 0.25 = 4).
4. Religious Fundamentalism as Disciplinarian Deity, Literalism, Religious Exclusivity, and Religious Intolerance
1. Some of the key ideas and empirical analysis presented in this chapter were also discussed in Moaddel and Karabenick (2018).
2. Allama Muhammad Umar Icharwi claims that Shah Waliullah was radicalized after he came under the influence of the Wahhabi teachings. See Allama Muhammad Umar Icharwi, “Shah Waliullah’s Links with Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab,” Let Us Build Pakistan, https://lubpak.com/archives/313032, retrieved June 22, 2017.
5. Macro-Contextual (Country) Variation in Religious Fundamentalism and Liberal Values
1. Information on religious freedom and religious prosecution was collected by Director Roger Finke and Associate Director Christopher Bader of the Association of Religious Data Archives, www.thearda.com. Retrieved August 2, 2019.
2. This measure was calculated using the ethnic-linguistic fractionalization index formula, which in turn was based on the Herfindahl ethnic concentration formula (cited in Posner 2004, 849).
7. For GDP per capital, see “Preview: GDP per Capita,” https://databank.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD/1ff4a498/Popular-Indicators; for different measures to construct FCP, see the following World Bank webpages: “Foreign Direct Investment, Net Inflows (% of GDP),” http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/bx.klt.dinv.wd.gd.zs; “Foreign Direct Investment, Net Inflows (Balance of Payments), http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/bx.klt.dinv.cd.wd; “Labor Force, Total,” http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/sl.tlf.totl.in; and “Gross Capital Formation,” http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ne.gdi.totl.cd; and for the internet, see the following World Bank webpage: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/it.net.user.zs. Retrieved August 2, 2019.
8. The standardized measure of international trade and foreign capital penetration was necessary in order to linearly combine these two variables and create a single measure of globalization.
6. What Makes a Country More Developed: Liberal Values Versus Religious Beliefs
1. Question e, which taps into attitudes toward the relationship between religion and politics, is worded to measure the extent of support for political Islam. This question is a reversal of the survey item concerning the separation of religion and politics that was used as one of the indicators of secular politics, which was discussed in chapter 3. It was also used as a proxy measure of secular politics for Saudi Arabia.
2. This comparison measures the relative significance of liberal modernity versus religious modernity, not religious fundamentalism, in contributing to development. Although religious modernity and fundamentalism are significantly linked (Moaddel and Karabenick 2018), the beliefs in Allah and in the truth of the scriptures are among the most basic religious beliefs and are quite different from religious fundamentalism. Moreover, given that such religious beliefs are strong among the respondents and development is considered something desirable, the respondents on the face of it are therefore more likely to connect higher religiosity to more development than otherwise. Thus, our liberal modernity index carries a conservative bias toward religious modernity.
7. The Arab Spring and Trend in Values: Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Turkey
1. This does not rule out the effect of a dramatic event like the Holocaust experienced by the Jews or the sudden death of a loved one that might provoke the feeling of being abandoned or even betrayed by God, shattering that person’s belief in the almighty and causing them to abandon religion altogether and turn secular.
2. The Arab Spring has been widely covered, generating an extensive list of articles, books, and commentaries on the subject. Using Google’s search engine to locate materials that include the expression “Arab Spring” yielded over 58,000 references on July 5, 2017.
3. Attitude toward democracy was not used as an indicator of secular politics because this measure, while important, has different meanings for different secular and religious groups in the Middle East and North Africa. For religious groups, in particular, democracy basically means participation in elections, without necessarily believing in freedom of expression (which includes freedom to criticize religion) and the separation of religion and politics. While attitude toward democracy is positively linked to the secular politics index, the measure has inconsistent and weak relationships with the indices of expressive individualism and gender equality across the seven countries.