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sociology of islam 5 (2017) 249-277 brill.com/soi Contextualizing Events in Imagined Communities Pre- and Post-September 11th Egyptian Attitudes toward Non-Arabs and Jews Sarah Shah Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, 725 Spadina Ave, Toronto, on M5S2J4 [email protected] Gabriel A. Acevedo Department of Sociology, University of Texas at San Antonio, One utsa Circle, San Antonio, tx 78249 Andrea Liza Ruiz Department of Sociology and Criminology, Pennsylvania State University, 211 Oswald Tower, University Park, pa 16802 Abstract The ongoing denigration of Arabs in the media, the Western democratic political shifts away from Muslim religious freedom, and increasing anxiety about Muslim radicaliza- tion prompt the question: How do Arabs respond to global events when the Muslim and Western worlds are perceived to clash? Our study draws on the theory of imagined communities to examine the extent to which exogenous world events influence at- titudes towards out-group members in the Egyptian context. We apply a “pre-post” quasi-experimental design using the World Values Survey, and examine the influence the events of September 11th, 2001 had on Egyptian perceptions of Jews and non-Arabs. Results suggest that intolerance towards both Jews and ethnic minorities decreased after the attacks. Results also suggest a complex, dynamic association between re- ligiosity and tolerance towards out-group members. We conclude by discussing the theoretical contributions of this paper by highlighting the significance of context and religion when framing imagined communities. Keywords Egypt – pan-Arabism – Islam – imagined communities – religious group identity – September 11th © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi 10.1163/22131418-00504002Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 02:55:52PM via free access <UN> 250 Shah, Acevedo and Ruiz Arab-Western relations are a major component of the global political stage. Huntington’s (1996) Clash of Civilizations thesis remains one of the seminal, yet highly controversial paradigms guiding the understanding of Arab-Western relations, postulating that conflict in contemporary societies would be less a function of material inequality and more based on ideological cleavages. In this, Huntington predicted eminent confrontations between the Arab world and the West. While this thesis has received substantial criticism for failing on both theoretical and empirical grounds (e.g., Acevedo 2008; Ahmed 2002; Chiozza 2002; Fox 2002; Henderson and Tucker 2001; Matlock 1999; Russett, Oneal, and Cox 2000; Tsygankov 2003), it nevertheless informs the often partial and partisan framing of Arab-Western relations, such that many continue to view the two cultures as inamicable. While actual political confrontations and alliances are much more complex, and beyond the scope of this paper, the public perception of conflict between the Arab and Western worlds is reflected in media representations of the Muslim Middle East. Media coverage, especial- ly in the West, tends to portray Arabs and Muslims as violent, radical jihadists with little regard for human rights (Said 1977; Shaheen 2003). This conceptu- alization of Arabs is often reflected in the growing anti-Arab and Islamopho- bic political shifts in Western democracies away from the freedom of religious expression for Muslims. From the contentious and ongoing debates around Muslim women’s clothing in both France and Canada (see Levey 2009 for a re- view), to, what some have argued, are the racist motivations underlying Brexit (Green et al. 2016), to Trump’s victory based on both a populist and Islamo- phobic platform (Lichtblau 2016; Yan, Sgueglia, and Walker 2016), to several Western countries’ opposition to receiving Syrian refugees for fear of the entry of sleeper cells (Eglitis 2015; Koran 2016), Muslims and Arabs are increasingly seen as “a fifth column” in democratic societies (Cainkar 2002). Furthermore, the rise of Daesh and the increasing Western anxiety about the radicalization of Muslims prompts the question: How do Arabs respond to global events when the Muslim world is publically perceived to be in conflict with the West? This study focuses on Arab reactions to the events of September 11th, 2001, which sent shockwaves throughout the international community (Moaddel 2003). While several studies have examined the “post-9/11” experiences of Arab Americans and American Muslims (Cainkar 2002; Cainkar 2009; Detroit Arab American Study 2009:153–154; Panagopoulos 2006), limited work has focused on the Middle Eastern experience (see Moaddel and Abdul-Latif 2006 for an exception). Particularly of interest is Egypt, which some call the first modern Arab state (Henry, Amara, and Al-Tauqi 2003). Egypt has received sustained international attention following the events of its revolution and displacement of President Mubarak, instatement and displacement of Morsi, and current sociologyDownloaded of islam from 5 Brill.com09/24/2021 (2017) 249-277 02:55:52PM via free access <UN> Contextualizing Events in Imagined Communities 251 leadership of el-Sisi. The significance of Egypt as an emerging democracy has been highlighted for decades before the recent revolutions (al-Mashat 1986; Kassem 2006). Since the revolutions, however, and as Egypt experiments with processes of democratic reform, critical attention has been directed at the na- tion’s gradual attainment of political stability (Azzam 2013; Bayat 2013). Conse- quently, the formation of national identity within this fledgling democracy is of vital interest to social scientists. For this study, we frame pan-Arabism as an imagined community in the Egyptian context, and, like Moaddel and Abdul-Latif (2006) we frame September 11th as a pivotal historic moment for the global community. Conse- quently, in keeping with the theoretical insights of the imagined communities perspective, we expect the events of 9/11 to have the effect of magnifying in- group ties at the expense of out-groups. In accordance with the contours of collective behavior described by theories of imagined communities and reli- gious social identity, we posit that Egyptians will have a strengthened sense of inclusiveness with the larger Arab community, and therefore be less tolerant of out-group members. We employ data from the World Values Survey, which was collected in Egypt before (2000) and immediately after (2002) the events of September 11th, allowing for a quasi-experimental design. This enables us to capture post-9/11 outcomes of pan-Arab nationalism in the Egyptian con- text, and provide empirically informed conclusions regarding Arab reactions to global events. We find that intolerance towards both people of other races as well as Jews decreased significantly after 9/11. This effect was moderated by education, such that those with higher levels of education were more likely to be more tolerant post-9/11. Religiosity plays a dynamic and complex role, such that both God salience and religious service attendance modestly correlate with less tolerance for people of other races, and religious service attendance modestly correlates with less tolerance for Jews. However, God salience and Muslim religious affiliation strongly correlate with more tolerance for Jews. Before proceeding to the empirical findings of our study, we discuss the imag- ined communities perspective, which frames the processes of nationalist identity formation. Imagined Communities Anderson (2006) proposed that modern nations might be conceptualized as “imagined communities” in which nationalist identities foster enhanced levels of social integration among individuals who share similar characteristics. These communities are “imagined” because they do not rest on concrete relationships sociology of islam 5 (2017) 249-277 Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 02:55:52PM via free access <UN> 252 Shah, Acevedo and Ruiz between individuals, as the traditional definition of community would assume (Grudz et al. 2011:1296), but rather on an intangible, abstract sense that oth- ers are collectively identified in a larger group. Anderson (2006:6) states that members of “even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow- members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.” While traditional use of imagined communities points to nations, more recent scholarship demonstrates how the theory can be applied to non-national communities (e.g. Grudz et al. 2011; Powers 2011). Hage (2005), however, has cautioned against the use of imagined communities beyond political spaces. While an imagined pan-Arab community is beyond a national context, it is within a political space, satisfying this reservation. The pan-Arab community, which is composed of the Arab-speaking countries of the Middle East region, has been regarded as a unique “supranational territory” in the formation and perpetuation of identity and community (Culcasi 2011). It is important to note that although the communities are imagined, they also are collective lived experiences, embodied by the members (McDougall 2011; Wien 2011). Such national communities, according to Anderson (2006), succeeded the formation of modern states in Europe because of the rise of vernacular print and literacy. Literary advances made the spread of informa- tion through the common language possible. It is for this reason, as well as the implications for increased social cohesion when individuals are able to com- municate via common mediums, that language is considered focal to the the-