The Arab Spring started as a new generation’s uprising for liberal democracy. It was soon shouldered aside, disrupted, or crushed. Exhilaration turned into paralysis. The existing political forces, embedded in the military and in religion in the countryside, proved stronger and better organized than the middle-class element demonstrating for democratic principles in Tahrir Square. In practice, the Arab Spring has exhibited rather than overcome the internal contradictions of the Arab-Islamic world and of the policies designed to resolve them.
