Uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa may be thousands of miles away, but people around the world — especially U.S. citizens — are still hearing the pro-democracy message loud and clear, according to research by a university professor.

After revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt earlier this year dominated international media headlines and indirectly led to similar revolts in Libya, Syria and elsewhere, government and politics professor Shibley Telhami conducted a public opinion survey earlier this month to gauge Americans’ perception of the Arab uprising. The findings, he said, were surprising: An overwhelming majority of Americans sympathize with the Arab people, and a majority also supported the pro-democracy movements, even if they result in a country that opposes U.S. policies.

“Seventy percent of Americans have a favorable view of Egyptian people, which is about on par with Israeli people,” he said. “And that’s really quite striking.”

The survey polled more than 800 Americans through an online questionnaire.

More than 76 percent of respondents saw the recent uprisings as positive in the long run, and 54 percent approved the recent NATO-led airstrikes in Libya, which have been embroiled in fighting since anti-government rebels attempted to oust its leader, Moammar Gadhafi.

Telhami said he was especially interested in conducting this survey when demonstrators in Wisconsin, who were protesting the state’s denial of collective bargaining rights for public unions, said their movement was influenced by the Egyptian revolt.

“Arab revolutions have captured the imagination of the world — not just the region,” Telhami said. “The fact that you have demonstrations that are domestic and labor-oriented in Wisconsin being inspired by an Arab democracy in Cairo is really something unique and something we haven’t seen before.”

Bill Nolte, a public policy professor, said he was not surprised that 57 percent of Americans polled were more concerned with bringing democracy to these countries than with maintaining strong ties with the United States.

“You’re going to have a change in government and there’s going to be some reduction of ties or intensity with the U.S., so it’s a reasonable finding that Americans want to see democratic countries in place,” he said. “There really is a seat change going on in the Middle East, and there’s some danger there in terms of what types of regimes come in place, but the American people would hope we get democratic regimes that do better for their people and do good by their neighbors. That’s what you’d like to hope.”

And Telhami said those surveyed generally perceived the uprisings as led by ordinary people seeking freedoms they had long been denied, not a competition of power among Islamic groups.

“In essence, what they’re getting from TV is that it is not extremism to be frightened by,” he said. “It is really about ordinary people seeking democracy, and that is really the big transformation.”

Sophomore accounting and supply chain management major Khaldun Taib, who is Syrian, said this shift in opinion speaks strongly to the democratic ideals Americans hold.

“I feel like [the survey] is important because it shows that Americans still have that ideal value of democracy and that we care about humanity as a whole having their freedom,” he said. “The revolutions definitely showed that most Arabs don’t have the same views as their leaders. … They’re not these scary, anti-American people Americans used to think of us as. They just want their basic human rights.”

abutaleb at umdbk dot com