The Arab street (, ash-shāriʿ al-ʿarabī) is an expression referring to the spectrum of public opinion in the Arab world, often as opposed or contrasted to the opinions of Arab governments. In some contexts it refers more specifically to the lower socioeconomic strata of Arab society. It is used primarily in the United States and Arab countries.
While it is sometimes assumed, particularly in the United States, to have been borrowed from Arabic political discourse, its evolution has followed a circular course from Arabic to English and then back. Lebanese newspapers began referring to just "the street" during the 1950s; later in the decade reports in The New York Times used the term in English to explain Gamal Abdel Nasser's broad appeal not just in his native Egypt but across the Arab world. Later commentators added the "Arab" and eventually dropped the scare quotes to create the current usage, which became widespread in American media during the First Palestinian Intifada in 1987. Arab media began using it themselves a decade later. However, its usage still differs between the two languages. In the Western English-language media, only Arab popular sentiment is referred to as the "street"; Arabic commentators use the expression in the same sense to refer to not just public opinion in their countries but in the West as well.
Due to the many negative connotations attached to the use of "street" as a modifier, the use of the term in English has been criticized as fostering stereotypes of a population easily roused to violence. The "Arab street" thus alternately justifies the need for an authoritarian ruler, or constrains the potentially moderate actions of those rulers. In the wake of the Arab Spring early in the 2010s, the concept of the Arab street has been revisited and challenged. The revolutions that toppled governments have, to some, shown how deficient and outdated Western understandings of Arab public opinion, shaped by the concept of the "Arab street", had been and have even led some to suggest it no longer be used. Others, including some Arabs, saw the uprisings as vindicating the importance of public opinion in their cultures and changing the popular concept of the street within them.
Definition
Attempts to directly define the Arab street have usually equated it with Arab public opinion. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who once covered the Middle East and frequently writes about the region, called it "the broad mass of public opinion" there in 2002, as distinct from extremist opinion, which he calls the "Arab basement". As of 2013, Collins English Dictionary defines "the Arab street" as an informal term for "public opinion in the Arab world."
Nevertheless, even as the term came into wide use, there was disagreement about its exact meaning. In 2002 a U.S. State Department official, reporting on a meeting between President George W. Bush and the leaders of Japan and Pakistan, said that the latter, Pervez Musharraf, had referred to the "possibility of trouble in the Arab street, whatever that is" over the upcoming invasion of Iraq. This uncertainty has led to confusion over what the term represents. During the same period of time, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld later recalled, Arab leaders urged him to make sure the operation went quickly as they "were worried about the 'Arab street' erupting in anger at the West's invasion of a Muslim country. I was skeptical of the idea that a monolithic Arab street existed ... but I did understand that popular discontent could cause them difficulties."
According to a 2009 paper on the evolution and use of the term by professors Terry Regier and Muhammad Ali Khalidi, some of that confusion results from a frequent second meaning. encompassing the majority of Arab public opinion, they observe, another usage seems to associate it more specifically with "a presumed seething underclass within Arab society, one that is viewed primarily as a source of political trouble." In a 1993 exploration of the Arab street's existence, David Pollock of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy began by acknowledging these connotations: "The very name evokes images of mystery, mobs and mullahs; it sounds vaguely subterranean, if not sinister; and it is most often regarded in the West with a peculiar mixture of fascination, dismissal and fear."