The resumption of revolutionary action in Egypt is demonstrative of several things. First of all, it seems that the Muslim Brotherhood has not yet severed its ties with the tyrannical heritage that it was close to since its foundation by Hassan al-Banna in the late 1920s. But one other equally important conclusion is that the Muslim Brotherhood's ascent to power is not the end of history. Here, because of the ongoing revolutionary climate, and the Brotherhood's verbal commitment to democracy and the commitments towards the West, the political struggle with the Islamist group may go very far. Indeed, the forces that ignited the January 25 revolution have returned to the squares, and with this, a crucial issue has returned to the forefront, namely that politics have succeeded in replacing the uprooting of foes. To be sure, no matter what one may say about Mohamed Morsi and his group, the fact remains that they are not the equivalent of Hosni Mubarak, in the sense that introducing measures [against the opposition] such as with Habib al-Adili or the Battle of the Camel, is unlikely, let alone saying that they are the equivalent of Bashar al-Assad, Muammar Gaddafi or Saddam Hussein. And because what is true in Morsi's case is also true with his Tunisian Islamist counterpart Rachid Ghannouchi, it is also possible to say that we, in large parts of the Arab world, have entered a new phase in our relationship with politics and the social order: Yes, there is a form of religious tyranny that desires to take root and grow more belligerent; but there are, in contrast, grass rooted movements, whether cultural or ones of youth and women, which do not lack in dynamism, and which have the ability to take the initiative and stand up to that tyranny. That the judges are at the heart of the new Egyptian protest movement, and for laws and their interpretation to be the main topic of the dispute, then this also indicates that we have moved from arbitrary and procedural issues into constitutional ones. In the end, who said that a decades-old, if not centuries-old, flaw, can be straightened in a year or two? Yet, the Egyptian (and Tunisian) developments contain a Syrian element that is not without ambiguity and contradiction. For even if the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (a weak group compared to its Egyptian and Syrian peers) were to seize control of Syria after Assad, then this does not mean that the new Syria will become Islamist. This is what the moral of the Egyptian (and Tunisian) story tells us. Beyond that, it will be difficult for the Islamists in Syria to impose Islamism, even more than this has been difficult for the Islamists of Egypt and Tunisia to do. This is due to the composition of the Syrian people, where the proportion of Sunni Muslims does not exceed two-thirds, compared to nearly 90 percent in Egypt and more than 95 percent in Tunisia. Moreover, these two-thirds lose an estimated 10 percent of the total population if we factor in the Kurds, who, by definition, belong to a different ethnicity from the Sunni Arabs. Nevertheless, this remains a double-edged sword. The reason is that the impossibility of the Islamist Solution in Syria does not necessarily mean that there will be an easy political and democratic solution. Here, the medicine is itself the disease: While the lack of harmony among the people can open the door to a political and democratic solution, it can also open the door to fragmentation, both sectarian and ethnic, that can quickly go out of control. Hence, one may perhaps say that the Syrian question remains the most complex and the most difficult, compared to the Egyptian and Tunisian ones. The Asian part of the Arab Levant is being tested by the Syrian Revolution, inasmuch as the ideas surrounding it and shaping it are. In order not to come out with an outcome similar to Iraq's, the need to stress the issue of political and cultural consciousness is greater than the need to do the same with the revolutions of Egypt and Tunisia. So which consciousness will triumph in Syria after Assad, who is growing weaker with each passing day? This is the question.
