One of the most wonderful of many wonderful aspects of the anti-totalitarian uprisings
in Tunisia and Egypt is that they have nailed the myth that Islamism represents the “authentic” voice of the Arab street. This was always a pernicious nonsense and the diversity of
those demonstrating across the Maghreb and Egypt has been one of the most noticeable features of the revolt.
This must be particularly galling for the Foreign Office, which has spent considerable resources in cultivating the Muslim Brotherhood and other revivalist groups across the Middle East. It is gratifying for those of us who warned against this orthodoxy that Islamist fellow-travellers such as Frances Guy, the UK’S blogging ambassador to Lebanon, have been proved so wrong. The Arabist experts of the FCO failed to see this coming, just as they failed to predict the rise of radical Islam in the late 1970s.
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