Holman wrote:msduncan wrote:...
Then you will see this:
/Israel taking out Iran nuclear facilities while chaos prevents action
A big question in all this unrest is whether the newly reformed/replaced/retrenched regimes be more anti-Israel than before. Anyone guess yet?
I don't know how the Egyptian people feel about Israel. Their governments have been at peace since Anwar Sadat and the Camp David accords. Mubarak is Sadat's heir. What happens if that continuity is broken?
We Westerners prop up secular despots if they keep the fundies at bay.
This columnist argues that Islamic governments will be more stable in the Middle East.
To most Western thinkers, suggesting a role for religion in government seems to be sailing against the wind of history. Europe’s rise to industrial greatness, democracy, and global power came in the wake of deliberate secularization. Part of the enduring appeal of the American dream is its religious tolerance. Russia, China, and the rest of East Asia have all flourished economically, if undemocratically, under secular rule.
Yet the examples in the Arab world look very different. The Middle East and North Africa is the world region most lacking in democratic government, tempting policy makers to imagine that positive change, as it has elsewhere, will go hand-in-hand with secularization. But the Middle East is also the origin and heartland of Islam, a faith sustained in part through its ability to serve as a political order as well as a religious belief. Unlike Americans, who may be deeply religious but are also raised to believe in separate realms of church and state, many quite moderate Muslims see nothing strange in the notion of a government fully infused with religious purpose.
Survey research in the Arab world, such as the University of Michigan’s Arab Barometer project, has found that respondents generally consider themselves Muslims above other markers of identity, including national citizenship. As a result, Islam isn’t just a feature of a national government; for many citizens, it may be as important as the idea of the nation itself. By forcing Islam out of state politics, as Tunisia did, the government can actually reduce its own legitimacy in the eyes of the people, leaving it vulnerable and forcing it to lean more heavily on the machinery of a police state.
I don't know how religious the Egyptian people are...I do know that the main opposition is a banned Islamic party. My sense is that Egypt is sufficiently modern that a theocracy there would not be a throwback like the Taliban.
If something resembling the caliphate (a transnational Islamic state) emerges from all these falling dominoes, that could be very bad news for Israel and US interests.
