The Second Arab Awakening and the Battle for Pluralism

by Marwan Muasher,
The Jerusalem Post, July 18, 2014

Ignited in December 2010, when a Tunisian man set himself on fire, the Arab Spring spread to more than half a dozen countries in the Middle East and North Africa, including Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen. Writing about it, however, is a perilous undertaking. In each of these countries, and elsewhere in the region, the Arab Spring remains a work in progress, proceeding in fits and starts, with movement sideways and backward as well as forward, and threatening to render a book on the subject out of date as soon as it is published.