For those of you who are regular MuslimSkeptic readers, you may recall the following article of ours which was published just over a year ago, in February, 2022:
Arabs Are Getting More Religious. Why Isn’t Western Media Reporting It?
The title was, of course, obviously a rhetorical question. We all know the reason why, since, when Arab Barometer (AB) showed a lower religiosity in the Arab world in 2019, all major Western media outlets were eager to share the news. They gleefully embraced the idea that the Arab world, which they viewed as the very heart of Islam, would become secular-liberal.
This is despite the fact that the project director of Arab Barometer, Michael Robbins, himself said that there was no “tsunami” of apostasy (to paraphrase a living legend).
As quoted in our earlier article, he also said:
In fact, our previous article analyzed the raw data of the more recent findings and found the exact opposite to be the case: Arabs were becoming more religious.
Neither Arab Barometer nor any major Western media outlet had analyzed it for months, though some did with far less enthusiasm, as we pointed out within another article back in July, 2022, entitled, Horror as Arabs Lose Faith in Democracy!
But now, Arab Barometer’s director, Robbins, came out with his own analysis in a blog post a few days ago—interestingly enough, coinciding with what was the first day of Ramadan (March 23, 2023)—and the actual title itself sets the tone: MENA Youth Lead Return To Religion.
Since it’s a blog post and not a report, we will not be carrying out a thorough, point by point analysis, as we did recently with trends in religiosity within Türkiye for example. The blog post is relatively short and pretty clear, so I would just advise giving it a read by yourself. More importantly perhaps, as mentioned, we had already carried out an analysis ourselves in our previous article and also touched upon it in other articles related to the Arab youth.
RELATED: Latest Arab Youth Survey: Less Democracy and More Shariah Please!
That being said, it would still be worthwhile for us to reproduce some of the most important quotes from Robbins here.
Towards the very beginning, he writes:
Robbins himself is probably wondering why the “media outlets” have not been “highlighting” these latest trends…
I mean, why, oh why would the secular-liberal Western media not be shouting from the rooftops about the idea of an increasingly more Islamic youth?
RELATED: Muslim Youth in South-East Asia Are More Religious Than Their Parents
He continues:
Within our own article, we put forward the hypothesis that the Lebanon situation was due to its secularized Christian population. However, as many people pointed out in the comments, the Shi’ah population may also play a role. This would also explain the situation with Iraq.
The Shi’ah seem to be much more prone to secularization. This can be seen in countries such as Iran or Azerbaijan and even within South Asia (in Pakistan they are seen as secularizing forces and have the reputation of being over-represented in media and pop culture).
This is likely due to the innate failure of Shi’ah theology, notably in the realm of politics.
RELATED: The Inevitable Failure of Political Shi’ism: The Secularization of Iran
It must be noted that, according to Robbins, who tries to provide a secular explanation for this, the situation in Lebanon is more to do with “the collapse of its financial system.”
Robbins then justifies the title of his blog post (MENA Youth Lead Return To Religion), writing:
Once again returning to that Lebanese exception, since now, even Iraq is no longer in the red.
Another country that deserves to be highlighted is Tunisia, as that’s where the youth became more religious.
We know that Tunisia holds a special place in the Arab world due to the fact that it had to endure its very own manifestation of Atatürk. Thus, this trend of individuals—especially the youth—resisting the secular élite is quite an inspiring thing to see. Ma sha’ Allah.
Robbins then goes on to clarify that it is not only about “self-identity” but also about religious practice:
