A Sunni Domino? Ctd

by Patrick Appel

Haroon Moghul gives  four reasons why Egypt, should Mubarak fall, wouldn't follow in Iran's footsteps. The most important is that, unlike Iran's Shah, Mubarak didn't attack Islam. Moghul writes that  "Egypt’s revolution doesn’t have to be Islamic because Islam isn’t at the heart of the problem on the ground":

 Muslim societies often have flourishing religious institutions and practices, organic and varied. But in the case of Iran, the regime paradoxically undermined that popular and organic religiosity when they sought to enforce faith through the state. This is an argument for keeping religion and politics separate in the Muslim world: in the interest of defending both from the negative effects of the other. Egypt’s “secular” dictator, who didn’t meddle too far into his people’s religious lifehe was no Shah, and no Ben Alihasn’t created a sharp cultural divide in his country (the economic one is something else altogether). So why would Egyptians need, want, or stress, an Islamic Revolution?

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