Arab Perceptions of the United States

This website is meant to serve as an educational tool through which people in the United States can learn about Arab opinions of the American government and people directly from individual Jordanians, Palestinians, and Syrians. Currently, much of what Americans believe about people from the Middle East has been determined by US politicians, CNN, and Hollywood. This website creates a space in which Arabs can articulate their opinions about the US to an American audience, in their own words and unfiltered by American politicians or media personnel. I believe that in order to foster true understanding between our regions of the world, we must create avenues for communication between everyday people. My purpose in developing this site was to create one such means for communication.

In November of 2005, while studying abroad in Amman, Jordan, I conducted interviews in which I asked the participants about their perceptions of the United States. The following semester I studied at the University of Damascus and in May of 2006, I interviewed Syrians asking them the same questions. Each interview focused on the following four topics: the events of September 11, 2001, the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, the US relationship with Israel and role in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and finally, American values, culture, and people.

It is important to note that when I originally wrote the questions for these interviews, the only topics I included were September 11 and Iraq. Based upon my experiences in the United States, I thought that those were the two events in recent history which had most impacted Arab-American relations. However, it was only after arriving in Jordan and having conversations with people there that I began to understand that US involvement in the Arab-Israeli Conflict plays a critical role in determing Arab perceptions of the US. I discovered that it was impossible for me to raise questions about 9/11 or Iraq without encountering responses concerning Israel. For this reason, I added the US relationship with Israel as another topic of discussion.

Some of the interviews contain a fifth topic: the suicide bombings of three American hotels in Amman. I added these questions because the bombings happened while I was in the middle of conducting interviews in November 2005. Al Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility and asserted that the hotel bombings were part of a strategy aimed at fighting American presence in the region. Many journalists suggested that it may have been meant as a warning to King Abdullah for his cooperation with the US government, however I wanted to understand how Jordanians percieved these attacks and whether or not they identified such a connection.

My motivation for undertaking this project is intricately linked to the reasons that I became interested in studying Arabic and traveling to the Middle East in the first place. The events of September 11, 2001 brought the Middle East to the forefront of my consciousness, as it did for many Americans. In the aftermath of those attacks, I became increasingly disturbed by what I saw as heightened levels of racism and ethnocentricity in my country. Perhaps what aggravated me the most was the national debate that emerged under the heading: “Why do they hate us?” President Bush addressed this question in a speech he gave to the nation on September 20. He said:

“Americans are asking, why do they hate us? They hate what we see right here in this chamber — a democratically elected government…They hate our freedoms — our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other. These terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life.”

In this speech, Bush was specifically referring to Al Qaeda members; however, it quickly became apparent that in mainstream parlance “they” came to be understood as Arabs or Muslims in general. This transfer in the meaning of the word “they” can be seen clearly in an article written by Fareed Zakari and published in the October 15, 2001 edition of Newsweek. The image displayed on the cover of that week’s edition became ingrained in my mind. It was a photograph of a young Arab man with his fist raised defiantly and his face contorted in an angry scream. The lead story was Zakari’s article entitled: “The Politics of Rage: Why Do They Hate Us?” In it, Zakari wrote the following:

“Only when you get to the Middle East do you see in lurid colors all the dysfunctions that people conjure up when they think of Islam today. In Iran, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, the occupied territories and the Persian Gulf, the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism is virulent, and a raw anti-Americanism seems to be everywhere. This is the land of suicide bombers, flag-burners and fiery mullahs. As we strike Afghanistan it is worth remembering that not a single Afghan has been tied to a terrorist attack against the United States. Afghanistan is the campground from which an Arab army is battling America.”

This was typical of the messages that were being fed to the American public at that time. The Middle East was portrayed as a region consumed by hatred and peopled by militant enemies of democracy. Anti-American sentiment among Arab and Muslim populations was attributed to their rejection of American values, thanks in part to President Bush’s speech. This led to widespread acceptance of the notion that conflict between the Arab/Muslim Worlds and the West was inevitable. As the Bush administration began to develop its strategies for the war on terrorism, President Bush employed the rhetoric of good vs. evil in order to further convince the American people of the fundamental differences between “us” and “them.” By declaring Muslims inherently evil, these journalists and politicians created the impression among Americans that not only was conflict between us inevitable, but also that dialogue was futile.

I, for one, did not trust these sources. I was certain that there was more to Palestine than “suicide bombers,” more to Syria than “flag-burners” and more to Iran than “fiery mullahs.” I was not convinced that “they,” a term which had come to designate a people rather than a minority of terrorists, hated me. But I wanted to go to the region and learn for myself. I wanted to have human interactions with people from the Middle East and to ask them about their perceptions of the US directly. These interviews provided me with the opportunity to engage in such conversations in a very deliberate way and, in turn, this project represents my attempt to transmit the opinions of seven interviewees to a wider audience. My hope is that this website will serve as an educational tool through which Americans can learn where the actual sources of resentment towards the United States lie, rather than relying on simplistic explanations like “they hate our values.” Additionally, I hope that this site will contribute to wider efforts aimed at undoing the demonization of Arabs and Muslims and restoring the humanity that mainstream media has denied them.

Bush, George W. “Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People.” September 20, 2001
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html Accessed on May 24, 2007

Zakaria, Fareed. “The Politics of Rage: Why do they hate us?” Newsweek: October 15, 2001.

I wanted these interviews to reflect a diverse population in terms of nationality, gender, age, socio-economic status, and religious belief. Of the 18 interviews that I conducted, only 7 are available on this website, thus it is necessarily a less diverse group than that with which I started. However, not all participants were willing to have their interviews videotaped and not all those videotaped could be included on the site. For these reasons, the perspectives of several other people including Amer, my cab driver in Amman, Bana, a young Christian woman from Latakia, and Mohammad, a researcher at the University of Jordan are regrettably absent from this site.

Interestingly, however, several important themes reoccurred consistently in all of the interviews regardless of the individual’s religious affiliation, level of education, or socio-economic status. Most important among these common threads are a conscious decision to distinguish between American people and the American government, a concerted effort to reserve resentment for the latter, and an emphasis on the importance of the US relationship with Israel in fomenting this resentment.

In spite the relatively small number of interviews that can be viewed here, significant differences in background still exist among the participants. Ahmed is the only interviewee who lives in Damascus, however according to Syrian law, his nationality is technically Iraqi since his father is from Baghdad. Um Salaam, Khulood, and Sana are all Palestinians who live in Jordan. Um Salaam was born in Hebron, but fled to Jordan after the 1967 War. She identifies as Palestinian with a Jordanian passport, and much of her family still lives in the Occupied Territories. Khulood is Palestinian, but born and raised in Amman. Sana, the youngest of the Palestinian women, has spent her life living in Becca, a Palestinian refugee camp outside of Jordan’s capital. Mohammad and Rawan are Jordanians who live in Amman, but whose families come from Irbid and Ma’an respectively. Mowad, also Jordanian, lives in the village of Dissa in Jordan’s southern desert.

The interviewees range in age from 18-62. They are all Muslim, although some identify more deeply with their religion than others. Mohammad, Rawan, and Sana are all university students who I had never met before approaching them on the University of Jordan campus in search of participants for the interviews. Once I explained the project, students lined up for the opportunity to share their ideas about the US with an American audience. I knew the other participants prior to conducting the interviews from a variety of settings. Khulood was my Arabic teacher in Amman. She also teaches English to Jordanian students and spent one year teaching Arabic at Earlham University in Indiana. I met Mowad while spending a week with his family in the desert of Wadi Rum. He currently works in Dissa as a government employee. Um Salaam, a retired art teacher, was the host-mom of a friend of mine. Finally, Ahmed works at the grocery store that I shopped at while living in the old city of Damascus.

Certainly the interviews of seven people cannot possibly encompass all the diverse perceptions that exist among Arab populations in regards to the United States. However, the commonalities that exist between them provide a good impression of the most widespread opinions. For those outside of the Middle East who do not have the opportunity to travel and meet Syrians or Jordanians firsthand, this site can serve as a means to increase understanding of the region and of the people that live in it who feel the repercussion of American foreign policy in their own lives.

Several interviewees stated that their first idea as to who might be responsible for the events of September 11 was Israel, and many still believe this to be true. All who reported this opinion defended it by citing news sources which reported that all of the Jews who worked in the Twin Towers were evacuated before the explosions. Two people suggested that al Qaeda may even have been a construction of the US or Israeli governments. Many Americans would ask how one could deny the existence of al Qaeda or its responsibility for the attacks of September 11. Others would find the idea of US government involvement to be offensive and similarly write off the idea of Israeli involvement as anti-Semitic. However, each of these opinions comes from the context of individual life experiences and warrants a deeper analysis.

The refusal to believe that al Qaeda is responsible for the events of September 11 2001 can be traced to several factors; the first of which is people’s deep-seated desire to distance themselves and their loved ones from the attacks. Mohammad, a 35 year-old professor at Jordan University, said that he felt ashamed that the individuals who committed these attacks are people with whom he shares a common culture, language and heritage. It is oftentimes difficult for people to come to terms with violent crimes, but this difficulty is compounded when the violence is perpetrated by people with whom one shares a common background. Think, for example, of the difficulty that many Americans experienced when trying to understand how young boys who grew up in suburban Colorado were capable of carrying out the attacks at Columbine High School.

Another aspect of the 9/11 attacks that made them especially offensive to several of the interviewees was the fact that the hijackers ostensibly committed the attacks in the name of Islam. For example, Khulood and Rawan clearly identify very deeply with their religion and the labeling of all Muslims as terrorists or of Islam as a religion that condones terrorism is hurtful and personally offensive to them. In order to refute these stereotypes entirely, several of the individuals that I interviewed insisted that the attacks were not even committed by Arabs or Muslims.

The opinion that the US and Israeli governments were involved in the attacks comes from people’s analysis of the repercussions of September 11. One of the first effects of those events that particpants identified was the surge in harassment and discrimination against Arabs and Muslims within Western countries. A second and more far-reaching result that Um Salaam, Mowad, and others lamented was the initiation of the War on Terrorism. The invasions and occupations carried out in the name of preventing terror have caused untold suffering for millions of Afghanis and Iraqis. On top of this, the War on Terrorism became the priority of the Bush administration and the Palestinian-Israeli peace process dropped out of sight. Many interviewees see the Palestinian cause as another casualty of these events. It is difficult for them to conceive that Muslims and Arabs could have purposely committed an act whose repercussions have been so detrimental to their own people.

On the other hand, they see people who want to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state as having benefited, and therefore some point to the Israeli government as a more likely suspect. Others believe that the US was looking for an excuse to invade Iraq and so they point to the American government. The rumor that all the Jews were evacuated from the Twin Towers surfaced in the immediate aftermath of the events of 9/11. While it has since been proven false, it is nonetheless important to understand where the capacity to believe this rumor comes from. According to Shibley Telhami: “Conspiracy theories are first and foremost a reflection of powerlessness: Those who have no power blame those who are seen to wield it most” (Telhami, 63). Telhami continues:

From a true story of the arrest and deportation of possible Israeli spies in the United States after 9/11, and from the reality that the attack strengthened US-Israeli relations at the expense of US-Arab relations, some Arabs have constructed an imaginary story about the responsibility of Israel—which to them is all powerful (Ibid, 64-65).

In response to questioning about what would motivate Israel to commit such an attack, several interviewees expressed a similar opinion. They stated that it is in Israel’s interest to create a rift between Arabs and the West. One young man said that his initial response upon hearing the news about the 9/11 attacks was fear because he immediately worried about the impact that those events might have on the Palestinian cause. In order to understand this fear, one must know that the attacks of 9/11 occurred in the midst of the second year of the Al Aqsa intifada, or popular uprising, in Palestine. Satellite television and other media sources brought the tragedies of the intifada into Arab homes on a daily basis, and therefore the conflict held center stage in the minds of people across the region. Jordanian government officials were also preoccupied with the Palestinian problem, and King Abdullah beseeched the American government not to lose sight of the issue. On September 15, 2001, Jordan’s Foreign Minister, Abdel Ilah Khatib, was quoted in the Jordan Times expressing his “…hope that the attention given to the struggle against terrorism does not turn attention away from the peace process, which is important for the people and countries of the region.”

“Jordan calls for world not to lose sight of Mideast peace process,” The Jordan Times: September, 15 2001.

Telhami, Shibley. The Stakes: America and the Middle East: the consequences of power and the choice for peace. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2002.

The term Arab is generally used to refer to people that live throughout North Africa, the Levant region, and the Gulf States. The Arabic language is spoken throughout these countries, albeit in highly divergent varieties. Modern Standard Arabic, which is used in official communication and publications, is a unifying force among them, and thus Arab countries can usually be distinguished from their non-Arab neighbors linguistically. Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan, for example, are often mistaken for being Arab countries. While the majority of Arabs are Muslim, there are minorities of Arab Jews and Arab Christians. In Damascus, for example, approximately 10% of the population is Christian.

The term Muslim refers to religious affiliation, specifically it denotes a follower of Islam, the third Abrahamic religion. Muslims constitute a much larger percentage of the world’s population than do Arabs. Many non-Arab countries are Muslim majority including: Turkey, Niger, and Pakistan. Indonesia is, in fact, the world’s most populous Muslim country. Muslim minorities exist in countries throughout the world.

It is important to recognize that these terms are not interchangeable. Not all Arabs are Muslim and not all Muslims are Arab. However, it may at times seems as though they are being used interchangeably on this website. This is a result of the considerable overlap that exists between the two, primarily the fact that all Arab countries are predominantly Muslim. Furthermore, all of the interview participants are both Arabs and Muslims. When Mowad discusses the invasion of Iraq, he traces his anger in part to the fact that Iraq is a neighboring Arab and Muslim country. When Rawan and Khulood discuss the aftermath of September 11, they both focus on the detrimental effects it has had on the international reputation of Islam. Other interviewees focus on the repercussions it has had for Arabs in general and most specifically Palestinians and Iraqis. It appears that when people speak about these issues, they tend to focus on whatever part of their identity is most important to them. Thus, very religious people are more sensitive to its impact on Islam, whereas people like Ziad, who thinks of himself first and foremost as a Palestinian, are more likely to focus on its impact on national communities.

The testimonies of these interviewees do not support the notion that Arabs are uniformly hostile to the West, nor the theory that fundamental differences in values are the cause of conflict between our countries. In fact, most participants express admiration for certain aspects of American culture and contributions of the US, including technological advancements and the high quality of educational institutions. Yet, they identify a sharp contradiction between the values they associate with American people and culture and the way in which the US government deals with Arab and Muslim peoples. They also note that while the US claims that its mission is to spread democracy, it actually supports dictatorial regimes throughout the region including: King Abdullah in Jordan, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and the Saudi ruling family. This hypocrisy serves to intensify participants’ resentment over the injustices they see the American government as perpetrating against their communities. In their eyes, the most egregious of these injustices is the US government’s unwavering support of Israel. They identify an American imperviousness to the deaths of Palestinians and Iraqis and wonder why their lives are deemed expendable, while those of Israelis and Americans are valued and their deaths treated as tragic. The participants’ prescription for improving Arab-American relations in the future is simple: American foreign policy must change, specifically in regards to Iraq and Israel/Palestine.

This website is my senior Capstone Project for a degree in Middle Eastern Studies at Brown University. I double-majored in Middle Eastern Studies and Latin American Studies. These regions of the world are intricately linked in my own personal experiences. In 2001, I was teaching ESOL (English to Speakers of Other Languages) to Latino immigrants in Minneapolis, MN. In the aftermath of September 11, my students faced increased harassment, eviction, and deportation. The experiences of these students and friends affected me profoundly and led me to wonder what the situation was like for Arab immigrant communities in the US. When the United States invaded Iraq in March of 2003, I was in Chiapas, Mexico. That spring I spent several months volunteering in Chiapas and Guatemala, and being a US citizen in Central America at the onset of another US invasion of a Third World nation was a challenging and eye-opening experience. Over the course of those three months in Central America, I spent much time thinking and having conversations about that other region, also centrally located according to someone’s map. It was this experience that solidified my desire to study Arabic and travel to the Middle East. After graduating in May of 2007, I will travel to Egypt for further Arabic study, this time through the Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA). In the future, I hope to work with Latino and Arab immigrant and refugee communities in the United States.

I would like to sincerely thank Ed Huff, Brown’s multi-media genius. Before beginning this project, I was intimidated by all the technical aspects of video editing, creating subtitles, and putting it all up on the web. Ed explained the programs clearly and helped me through problems with patience. He always had coffee brewing and time for a story about his grandson or boat. It was wonderful listening to his stories and learning from his immense wealth of knowledge. Thank you, Ed!

I would also like to thank Ammar Shaikhouni. Ammar listened to the videos with me, some of them over and over and over again in order to help edit the translations and make them reflect the interviewees’ expressions as accurately as possible. The help of a native speaker in this work was invaluable.

A special thank you to Mirena Christoff, my Arabic professor from first semester of freshman year through last semester of senior year. Mirena’s love of this language, her skill and dedication as a teacher, and her genuine kindness have inspired me throughout these four years. Without her support and encouragement, I would never have made it from the days of stuttering through Alif Ba to conducting interviews entirely in Arabic. Alf shukran ya ustaazatee al azeeza.

Also thank you to Professor Colla for helping me to push the limits of my language abilities and for encouraging me to pursue Arabic studies after Brown. Shukran ikteer for your advice this semester and for serving as my lifeline to the Middle East Studies concentration.

I would also like to thank the interpreters that helped me with the interviews in Jordan. And finally, sincere thank you’s to all the interviewees for their eagerness to participate and for their thoughtful and sincere responses.