Arab street

This article is about the political term. For the street in Singapore, see Arab Street.

Stores with signs in large Arabic lettering stretching from the lef foreground to the right rear on a street where reconstruction work is in progress
Streets have long been the primary place for public interaction in the Arab world, leading to the metaphoric use of "Arab street" for public opinion.

The Arab street (Arabic: 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.[1] 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.[2] Arab media began using it themselves a decade later.[3] 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.[4]

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.[5] 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 The revolutions that toppled governments have, to some, shown how deficient and outdated Western understandings of Arab public opinion, shaped by the concept of the "Arab street", had been[5] and have even led some to suggest it no longer be used.[6][7] 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.[8]

  1. ^ Friedman, Thomas. Under the Arab Street, The New York Times, October 23, 2002.
  2. ^ Regier, Terry; Khalidi, Muhammad Ali (Winter 2009). "The Arab Street: Tracking a Political Metaphor" (PDF). The Middle East Journal. 63 (1): 19–23. doi:10.3751/63.1.11. S2CID 143379690. Retrieved September 3, 2013.
  3. ^ Regier and Khalidi, 26.
  4. ^ Regier and Khalidi, 24.
  5. ^ a b Malik, Hassan (January 31, 2011). "The Myth of 'the Arab Street'". World Policy Journal. Archived from the original on September 21, 2013. Retrieved September 3, 2013.
  6. ^ Cohen, Roger (February 14, 2011). "From 9/11 to 2/11". The New York Times. Retrieved September 12, 2013.
  7. ^ Ajami, Fouad (February 27, 2011). "How the Arabs Turned Shame Into Liberty". The New York Times. Retrieved September 12, 2013.
  8. ^ Shaybeddine, Ula (September 29, 2011). "The New Meaning of the Arab 'Street'". Al Akhbar. Retrieved September 3, 2013.