Fascinating survey conducted across the Arab world. In a region where this type of survey isn’t typically conducted, this offers a generally +ve view of progress, in a place where progress is extinguished like fire under a boot.
in a place where progress is extinguished life a fire under a boot.
I would laugh, except it is too true—great turn of phrase, though.
I’m curious if this decline in religiousness is also manifested in the retreat of the headscarf. I knew someone who had visited Cairo in the mid-80s, when it was rare, but by the time I went in the mid-90s, it was common enough that ~half the women we’d see were wearing it (somewhat less in Syria). I always wondered back then how Egypt went from Sha`arawi to that; now I wonder if, 20 years on, things have swung back the other direction?