{"id":200,"date":"2011-03-07T21:46:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-07T20:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2011\/03\/they-said-they-wanted-a-revolution.html"},"modified":"2014-11-12T04:39:33","modified_gmt":"2014-11-12T03:39:33","slug":"they-said-they-wanted-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2011\/03\/they-said-they-wanted-revolution.html","title":{"rendered":"They said they wanted a revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

<\/a>Well, Hosni Mubarak\u2019s gone, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali has gone, and surely Gaddafi can\u2019t be that far behind.<\/p>\n

Who\u2019da thought, eh? To me, it\u2019s all the more remarkable because prior to these revolutions the received wisdom was that the \u2018Arab street\u2019 was incapable of revolt (I guess so long as you forget about the revolt against the Ottoman Empire!).<\/p>\n

But in fact there has always been quite a lot of support for revolution among Muslims. Back in 2004, Robert MacCulloch (Imperial College London) and Silvia Pezzini (London School of Economics) analysed data from the World Values Survey between 1980 and 1997 of 130,000 people living in 61 nations (you can find their report here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

They analysed which people wanted a revolution \u2013 specifically, they wanted to know what kind of person agrees that \u201cThe entire way our society is organised must be radically changed by revolutionary action\u201d. <\/p>\n

They matched that to religious affiliation, and found that 17.4% of Muslims want a revolt, compared with 10.3% of the non-religious and 7.9% of Christians.<\/p>\n

Of course, Muslims are more likely to live in countries that are autocratic and where rights are limited \u2013 according to a list compiled by Freedom International, there not a single majority-Muslim country that is \u2018Free\u2019.<\/p>\n

So they adjusted for the degree of freedom and also for other important factors that affect the taste for revolution \u2013 wealth (both individual and national) and national economic growth. Once you do that, Muslims, the non-religious and unreligious are all equally like to support revolt, while Christians are about 3% less likely to. But the precise relationship is different in free and unfree countries.<\/p>\n

In \u2018free\u2019 countries, Muslims\u00a0 have about the same taste for revolt as the non religious, while Christians are significantly anti-revolutionary (about 4.1% less likely to support revolution).<\/p>\n

In countries that are not free, however, Muslims are 12.6% more likely than the non-religious to support revolt, while Christians are only 1.1% less likely.<\/p>\n

It seems that being a Christian or a Muslim in an unfree country seems to be a trigger for revolutionary sentiment \u2013 especially for Muslims.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not clear why this should be, but there are some intriguing pointers in the data. For example, one way dictators keep themselves in power is by favouring some groups over others \u2013 the old \u2018divide and rule\u2019 strategy. In turns out that Muslims are more likely to support a revolt when they are in the majority \u2013 in unfree Muslim countries, support for revolution reaches an impressive 25%.<\/p>\n

Muslims always have a higher level of taste for revolt than Christians, now matter how you cut the data by freedom and minority\/majority status. That might be partly because not all revolutions are the same. Muslims are much more likely to want a revolution to increase political rights \u2013 they\u2019re not so interested in revolutions to improve civil liberties.<\/p>\n

So part of the reason that we don\u2019t see more revolutions in Muslim countries might be that potential revolutionaries actually want a government that is more <\/b><\/i>restrictive of personal freedoms! We\u2019ll have to wait to see which kind of revolutionary wins out in North Africa.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Creative<\/a><\/span> This article by Tom Rees<\/b> was first published on Epiphenom<\/a>. It is licensed under Creative Commons<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, Hosni Mubarak\u2019s gone, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali has gone, and surely Gaddafi can\u2019t be that far behind. Who\u2019da thought, eh? To me, it\u2019s all the more remarkable because prior to these revolutions the received wisdom was that the \u2018Arab street\u2019 was incapable of revolt (I guess so long as you forget about the revolt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2091,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThey said they wanted a revolution<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Well, Hosni Mubarak's gone, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali has gone, and surely Gaddafi can't be that far behind.Who'da thought, eh? 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