Brad, from your great article:
“Before the revolutions of the Arab Spring, Salafists like Chaouachi say they had little room to breathe. The repressive regimes of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, and Moammar Gaddafi in Libya tightly regulated religious expression and routinely harassed and imprisoned those who appeared outwardly pious, especially men with long beards. That made it impossible to gauge the strength and popularity of Salafist ideology.”
“Mohamed Tolba, a Salafist activist in Egypt, said he was detained 22 times under Mubarak’s regime, and that police would harass him if he walked by the tourist hotels or museums, taunting him and speculating aloud that he was a troublemaker or a terrorist. “Before, for the Salafists, it was not our country. We lived in a bubble,” he said. “Now we are leaving it and getting involved in society.””
Which is why they needed dictators. Obamist and Hillary have done a Jimmy Carter - we’re fated for very big trouble.
Like the Iranian Revolution these countries are replacing autocracy with theocracy. Iran today is as corrupt and maybe more brutal as it ever was under the Shah and so soon will be Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and the others.
Islam is about 1,400 years old. If you look at what Christians were doing at that point in their time Joan of Arc was being burned alive.