Epilogue

Abstract

As 2011 dawned, the whole world was taken by surprise as unprecedented popular uprisings swept across several Arab countries from North Africa to Western Asia to the Arabian Gulf. The “Arab Spring”—rather Arab uprisings, as this might be an “Arab Fall”—promised the birth of Arab democracies replacing autocratic regimes. Despots and lifelong rulers in secular Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen were toppled in response to the “People want to down the regime,” demanding freedom, dignity, equality, and social justice for all. In Syria and Bahrain, and, to a lesser extent, Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Oman, demonstrations were crushed or demonstrators co-opted by ruling autocrats and monarchs. The Arab uprisings signaled that the wall of fear is shattered forever and irreversibly. The 2011 Arab uprisings did not call for Islamization of regimes “a-la Iranian revolution.” They were not feminist movements calling for women’s rights and gender equality.

Written before the second popular revolt in Egypt of June 30, 2013 that toppled President Mohamad Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood.