Critical Reaction of the Michael Hoffman and Amaney Jamal's empirical study

The empirical study of Michael Hoffman and Amaney Jamal has some interesting findings:

1) The readers of the Qur’an are those who protest the most compared to the non-readers;

2) This is due to “grievance” (601): they do not believe that the political regime is faithful of Islam;

3) And/or use “opportunity” (601) to participate more in politics in order to achieve a positive change.

The empirical study is astonishing in how well the research has expended to all the Arab countries, especially considering the fact that the authors studied only two states.

I tend to see this paper as a good expansion and well-explained of the correlation between the readers of the Qur’an and the protests. For me the whole structure of the paper is the biggest strength of both authors and their study. In fact, throughout the article, the authors wants the audience to better understand what is at stake in the empirical study and so, they do not hesitate to give us more consideration in the paper, such as having a background or even explaining the data and the methods so that the readers would not be surprised by the conclusions they are deducing. In this section, the authors analyze the approach that seem the most relevant to them: surveys and identifying the dependent and independent variable.

The authors also say in what they believe in like “we believe that this method allows for more conservative tests and hypothesis” (598), “we believe that this method present a more rigorous test of our hypotheses than complete-pooling or partial-pooling strategy” (598). This is enjoyable to read so that we know where they stand on their method of research and the reasons.

It is a binary collection of data for the first question on the dependent variable and a multiple choice for the independent variable. This choice helps to better understand if the person participated in a protest against their former president and how often this same person read or listen the Qur’an. The fact that the authors give the reason why they cannot use the mosque attendance in order to have a better understanding of the dependent variable is appropriate and pertinent. Indeed, if thy wouldn’t have explain the reason of the use of reding or listening the Qur’an as the independent variable, instead count the mosque attendance, it would have been really surprising, particularly when in previous cases, authors took church attendance to prove their point and not Bible reading or listening.

Michael Hoffman and Amaney Jamal also report the results: in Egypt end Tunisia the data shows that in fact, the communal prayer is irrelevant rather than the Qur’an reading through empirical study. However, compared to Egypt with 86% of protest, Tunisia has only 16% and the authors twist the result so that they would fit the hypothesis: “it is important to consider the relative impact of religiosity on protest behavior in each country” (600). For e, the biggest limit to the study is that the authors only use two countries for their research instead of studying other countries.

In fact, the Arab world is strongly shaken in 2011 by a movement of unprecedented nature coming from societies that challenge the authoritarian forms of government to which they have been subjected for decades. From Tunisia, this movement quickly spread to Egypt – both studied in the research –, and then to several countries in the Maghreb and the Middle East. There is still uncertainty as to the outcome of the changes, that the regimes managed to defuse the challenge by making concessions to maintain social peace at all costs (Morocco, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait), whether they exercised a fierce repression (Bahrain, Syria, Yemen), whether they were killed by street protests (Tunisia, Egypt) or at the cost of an expensive civil war (Libya). Morocco, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Syria, Yemen, and Libya are also a part of the Arab Spring and they are protesting in one form or another to show their antipathy for the regime.

The Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions encouraged the people of Yemen, Bahrain and Syria to protest against their governments at the beginning of 2011. In each of these countries, and especially in Syria, where the government of Bashar al-Assad brutally repressed insurgencies despite the condemnations of the international community, deadly clashes take place between demonstrators and law enforcement. Yemen’s President Ali Abdallah Saleh finally agreed to leave power in November. In Algeria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Oman, the heads of state and government launched reforms to meet the demands of the population and contain any revolutionary movement.

In short, the research could have more in-depth comparison and data to prove the points of the authors. The more a research is precise, well-calculated and narrowed, the better the research will be. Here, the authors only study two countries and make a general understanding out of the two. They presented the reason of the focus of Egypt and Tunisia in the background however, as I mentioned earlier, the other countries protested in different way than Egypt and Tunisia, such as Libya, the rebellion against Colonel Moammar al-Khadhafi was transformed into a civil war during which the O.T.A.N. forces intervened. In all those states, people are protesting against both poverty and unemployment and against the tyranny and corruption of authoritarian governments that have been in power for decades.

In the conclusion, Michael Hoffman and Amaney Jamal diagnosed that “it remains difficult to identify who the protestants were and why they were mobilized into antiregime activity” (604-605). Therefore, to go further in the research, a new study could ask for the identification of the protestants and the reasons of their mobilization. As I stated before, the people protested it against poverty, unemployment and the despotism and nepotism of the autocratic government under which they lived. So, it would be mostly poor to lower middle-class people who were protesting against both the economical and political situation of their countries. And I would say that the reason would be because they were tired of such economical and political situation in their countries, and Egypt and Tunisia led the way to other Arab countries to insurgent against these oppressions.

...