After suffering decades of repression and forced to go underground, the recent election victory for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood has emboldened the movement to spread its influence in a region where mainstream political Islam has for so long been denied. At the same time, this is cause for much anxiety to the remaining despotic Arab regimes, particularly in the oil-rich Gulf. Even prior to the elections it was widely reported that the Saudi’s preferred an Egypt run by the remnants of Mubarak’s regime, such as Ahmed Shafik, than an Islamist candidate.[1] They fear that a brotherhood victory will not only embolden the already problematic Islamist opposition at home but also set the grounds for Egypt reclaiming leadership of the Islamic world, upstaging …

The Arab world shocked us twice in recent months, once with the eruption of the revolutionary spring, and again with the sweeping to power of Islamist parties. The revolutions have radically shifted the political map of the region and transformed the world’s perception of its politics, and even transformed the world. But the equally unanticipated, and very decisive, ascendancy of the Islamists, from Morocco to Kuwait, has confused many observers. Already some are repeating the old adage, voiced most provocatively by Elie Kedourie in 1992, that the Arabs do not comprehend, let alone desire or deserve democracy. It is interesting that Kedourie was responding to the results of an opinion poll which showed that the majority of Egyptians supported democracy, …