​There are many approaches to answering the thorny questions still being raised in the contemporary Arab world after more than 150 years: Why is the West advancing and not the Arab world? Why do we have faith in technology but not in modern science? Why are Arab societies opposed to structural change in politics like in economics, culture, and society? From among these approaches I will choose habitus as an operational concept to try to put forward a new socio-cognitive understanding of the question, bearing in mind that this concept which was gradually formulated by Pierre Bourdieu is itself a theory, given its coherence and methodological intensiveness, just like the concept of asabiya for Ibn Khaldun, which is also treated as a theory.