LONDON: The countries of the Middle East are “backward-looking,” unfriendly, or even hostile to Western nations, and fail to share their values or aspirations.
These are the worrying and outdated perceptions of people in four Western nations — the UK, US, France and Germany — surveyed in a new poll conducted for the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
The same poll, however, reveals that, in fact, Arabs in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and Tunisia “deeply respect the US and its values of freedom, innovation, and opportunity.”
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YouGov conducted interviews online between March 20 and March 28 with 6,268 adults in four Western countries; the US (1,418), UK (1,780), France (1,065) and Germany (2,005).
Zogby Research Services, meanwhile, conducted face-to-face interviews between March 17 and April 7 with 4,856 adults in five Arab countries: Egypt (1,043), Iraq (1,044), Lebanon (857), Saudi Arabia (1,043) and Tunisia (869).
