Politics in the Arab world has long been consumed by two fears. First, the fear of the status quo, maintained by regimes that lack vision yet dominate endlessly. Second, the fear of the alternative: a puritanical opposition and its potential for revolutionary or even nihilistic takeover. Between these two poles, the Arab world has had no middle ground. Choose the present authoritarian governments with all their shortcomings, bad economic policies and limited measures of social and personal freedom. Or choose upheaval and the extremists whose theocracy would be draped in strict codes of behavior governing such things as dress, social...
