.... In Egypt, too, we see a revolution resulting from failure rather than a revolution grounded in a viable vision for the future.
Fortunately Egypt’s centuries of relative stability and strong sense of identity protect it from the worst kinds of chaos and civil war that assail weaker and less firmly-founded countries like Iraq, Syria, Libya and Lebanon. Egypt is neither a developing country in the sense that it is gaining on the advanced world or a failed state; it is stuck in the gray zone in between.
In Turkey, a sometimes feisty and over-the-top Kemalist regime has given way to a sometimes feisty and over-the-top group of Islamists; in the Arab world, a gaggle of failed secularist modernizers is being driven from power by waves of public resentment and frustration.
Either way, the century in which French secularism was the dominant ideological force in the Middle East has now clearly come to an end. From Pakistan to Morocco, the Muslim world has turned its back on the modernity of the 20th century. God only knows what comes next. [Business Insider] Read more [via National Secular Society]
