Liberal Democracy in North Africa. Not.

Soldiers talk of “the fog of war” when they want to explain how difficult it is to gather good intelligence while a battle is raging.

In the minds of Western intellectuals there is another fog, the one that clouds their judgment whenever it looks like a Revolution is breaking out somewhere.

As Charlotte Allen explains in a recent piece on her own experience in Tunisia and Egypt, the fog of revolution has blinded liberals and conservatives alike. Link here.

In her words: “…the nearly eight weeks I spent last summer in the North African ummah (Tunisia and Egypt, to be specific) filled me with the opposite of the euphoric optimism that now seems to be the hallmark of both liberal and conservative commentary on the ‘jasmine revolution‘ uprisings in both countries.”

Allen’s is a personal account. For those of us who are still trying to get a handle on the events, she offers an excellent analysis: “It’s not surprising that there’s so much optimistic reporting that ordinary Muslims ‘yearn‘ for freedom, democracy, human rights, and to be just like the West. But outside the touristed enclaves of cosmopolitanism, I saw just the opposite: societies that were obstinately Islamic in the face of efforts by leaders with vast state-police apparatuses at their disposal to shove them into secular modernity. Indeed, the ordinary Muslims of Tunisia and Egypt seemed determined to be more Muslim than ever, some 50 or 60 years after policies of aggressive Westernization in both countries had been put into place.”