[lg policy] How the use of language shapes which Islamic groups Westerners support

Thu Sep 8 15:28:48 UTC 2016

How the use of language shapes which Islamic groups Westerners support
<http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2016/09/08/how-the-use-of-language-shapes-which-islamic-groups-westerners-support/>
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*[image: Mujtaba Ali Isani 80x108] <http://wp.me/p3I2YF-5GQ#Author>[image:
Daniel Silverman 80x108] <http://wp.me/p3I2YF-5GQ#Author>The US faces a
complicated foreign policy environment in the Middle East, with a number of
Muslim groups and actors involved, some seeing US support, some working in
opposition. In new research, **Mujtaba Isani
<http://wp.me/p3I2YF-5GQ#Author>** and **Daniel Silverman
<http://wp.me/p3I2YF-5GQ#Author>** examine how Islamic cues influence the
opinion of those in the West towards such groups. They find that such cues
– for example, Shari’a law being a policy goal – do matter, and that the
degree to which is heavily influenced by citizens’ partisanship.*

In recent years, the United States and its “Western” allies have been
confronted with an endless stream of foreign policy choices towards the
Islamic world. Since 2011, the US has had to decide whether to embrace
elected Islamic parties in Egypt and Tunisia, support Islamic rebels in
Libya and Syria, and negotiate with Iran about its nuclear program, in
addition to managing two wars and three drone campaigns in Muslim majority
countries. While foreign policy choices like these are shaped by many
factors, one key input is public opinion. So how does the perceived Islamic
character of these actors shape foreign policy opinion towards them?

Unfortunately, our existing understanding of these dynamics is limited.
Research shows that religious differences are an important ingredient in
foreign policy attitudes – in two recent survey experiments (here
<http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8711968>
and here
<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1743-8594.2012.00183.x/abstract>),
Western publics were more willing to start a war against “Muslim” than
“Christian” adversaries. Yet this presents a simplistic view of how
religious disparities impact foreign policy opinion. Consider the key
participants in the Syrian civil war, for instance – ISIS, the Al-Nusra
front, the “moderate” Free Syrian Army, the Kurdish rebel groups,
Hezbollah, and the Assad regime, among many others. While all are broadly
“Muslim,” their Islamic character is portrayed by themselves – and by
Western media – quite differently. Do these differences shape foreign
policy attitudes? When are Western publics *really* fearful and mistrustful
of Muslim actors?

We examined these issues in an experiment conducted in May 2015 on
Amazon’s *Mechanical
Turk* <https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome> (MTurk) platform. In the
experiment, we gave Americans different news stories about the Syrian
conflict in which we randomly changed aspects of a realistic, but
fictitious, rebel group – the Free Syria Movement (FSM) – that was seeking
US support. Specifically, we examined whether giving the actor common
Islamic language (“*Allah willing…Allahu akbar*”), policy goals (“*Shari’a
law*”), and/or labels (“*Islamist*”) significantly impacted citizens’
feelings, attitudes, and ultimately policy preferences towards it. Here is
what we learned:
*1) Islamic cues like these do indeed matter.*

Under normal circumstances, we found that respondents’ attitudes towards
the FSM were relatively benign. Although they knew the group was Muslim,
they tended to give neutral or mixed responses about its level of
trustworthiness, compatibility with American values and interests,
emotional impact on them, and likely role as an American ally or adversary
in the region. Likewise, they had mixed views about sending it the
requested American military aid (although they leaned slightly against
overall).

In contrast, with the three Islamic cues incorporated into the vignette,
these responses all shifted in a sharply negative direction. Citizens
tended to see the group as untrustworthy, incompatible with their values
and interests, a source of fear, and a potential regional adversary. Their
willingness to provide aid moved firmly towards opposition, dropping on
average by over 7 percentage points. And other attitudes took even larger
hits, with average trust in the group dropping by 10 percentage points and
average affect towards it plummeting by 12. In sum, respondents did not
have particularly hostile attitudes towards the Islamic actor to begin
with, but only when they were “cued” to do so.
*2) But some cues matter more than others.*

Yet we also found that some of the Islamic cues harmed attitudes towards
the group far more than others. In particular, insertion of “*Shari’a law*”
as a policy goal had the most harmful impact, while use of the “*Islamist*”
label did the least damage of the three cues. This is not wholly surprising
– although goals like *Shari’a law* can have many different meanings in the
Muslim world, from inclusive welfare states to punitive morality codes
<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2482547>, they have
been caricatured solely in terms of violence and oppression by Western
elites. As stated by Newt Gingrich
<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/22/us/politics/in-shariah-gingrich-sees-mortal-threat-to-us.html?_r=0>,
*Shari’a* is “a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United
States and in the rest of the world as we know it.” In fact, anti-*Shari’a*
legislation had been proposed in 23 American states by 2011
<https://www.cair.com/anti-sharia-legislation-campaign.html>. Nor is such “
*Shari’a*-phobia” unique: other broad Islamic political goals such as the
pursuit of a Caliphate have been received with similar apprehension in the
West.
*3) Their influence depends on partisanship.*

Finally, we found that the effect of these cues depends on citizens’ party
identification. As shown in Figure 1, with all three cues activated, for
example, we see a 22 percentage point drop in trust in the group among
Republicans, a 10 percentage point drop among independents, and a 5
percentage point drop among Democrats. This also is not wholly unexpected.
Republican political elites often describe security threats in more
explicitly Islamic terms, with a greater willingness to label terrorist
groups as “Islamic” and invoke concepts like Shari’a and the Caliphate to
characterize their goals. Accordingly, we interpret this mostly as
Republican identifiers taking cues from their elites. Yet, as is clear,
independents and Democrats are not immune from these reactions either.

*Figure 1 – The Effects of All Three Islamic Cues on Attitudes Towards the
FSM, by Party Identification*

[image: Isani Fig 1]
*Note: Results from OLS regressions with Islamic cues as well as
demographic covariates. 95% confidence intervals.*

In sum, Western anxiety towards Muslim political actors is not just
automatic. Rather, it is stoked by the rhetorical *choices* of Western
elites (who politicize Islamic terms and ideas) and of the Islamic actors
themselves (who use them ignorant or indifferent to this politicization).
Contested Arabic-language terms like *Shari’a*, *Khilafah* (Caliphate), and
*jihad* may make the easiest targets. The key point is not that these words
do – or don’t – mean what Western audiences often assume they do, but
rather that *they can mean many different things* in the Islamic world and
thus serve as poor guides to a group’s intentions or likely behaviors.

So, what is to be done? Ultimately, fear-mongering elites will still use
this language – but other actors can become more informed about it. First,
ordinary citizens may benefit from a clearer picture of how their attitudes
can be manipulated by these cues, and may wish to educate and inoculate
themselves. Second, the media may benefit from a clearer portrait of how
its context-free use of Islamic “buzzwords” contributes to the process –
offering some explanation instead of simply regurgitation of terms like
*Shari’a* could help provide essential context for readers. And finally,
and perhaps most fundamentally, Islamic actors seeking Western assistance –
whether rebel factions in Syria or political parties in Tunisia
<https://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/11/15/177378.html> – may
benefit from a clearer view of how their rhetorical choices resonate
overseas and can poison local perceptions and obstruct their objectives.
Ultimately, they would be wise to use politicized Islamic cues like
*Shari’a* with great care.

*A version of this article originally appeared at the Washington
Post’s **Monkey
Cage blog*
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/07/28/when-does-islam-generate-western-anxiety/>*,
and is based on the paper, ‘**Foreign Policy Attitudes toward Islamic
Actors’* <http://prq.sagepub.com/content/69/3/571>, in *Political Research
Quarterly.*

*Featured image credit: Dan Iggers
<https://www.flickr.com/photos/fortinbras/> (Flickr, CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0
<https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/>)*

*Please read our comments policy before commenting.*
<http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/comments-policy/>

*Note:  This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of
USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor the London School of Economics.*

*Shortened URL for this post: **http://bit.ly/2cI978t*
<http://bit.ly/2cI978t>

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2016/09/08/how-the-use-of-language-shapes-which-islamic-groups-westerners-support/

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