A lot of this boils down to some fundamentals of democracy at play.
It is difficult to have a functioning democracy if you have too much of religion involved or too little education. One of the problems in Egypt is that they university educated so many of their young people and could not provide adequate and rewarding employment for them, thus creating something akin to the old "idle rich" in that they have the "idle educated," which is a recipe for frustration that is looking for a solution. If Mubarak had been able to put his idle educated to work, he might still be in power today.
The religious component is the fact that the only viable political party inside of Egypt at the time of the Arab Spring was the Muslim Brotherhood, who are trying to combine religion and governance. What they really want to do is to create a theocracy. What they have done is to create a mess. If the mullahs in Iran did not keep such a tight rein on things and have the backing of their own military, they would be in one just as well.
The education component has interesting applications for the United States as well. Since the Supreme Court decision on school prayer, more and more very religious people have been educating their young with a religious bent to that learning. They do not believe in things such as global warming or evolution and are, in reality, raising their children to believe in Bible based, theology oriented concepts that come from a time when over ninety percent of the population could not read or write and depended on those educated in religious teaching for their guidance. It was also a time when religions such as Christianity competed with things such as black magic for the peoples attention.
Democracy exists and functions properly in a rather narrow band where there is separation between church and state and a good education system that teaches its citizens to critically think. They can use that critical thinking ability to decide whether they wish to believe in faith based ideas and to differentiate between information thrown at them about scientific, cultural, civic, and political ideas. Without that educational base that teaches critical thinking, your democracy is really doomed. And, the United States is creating multi generations of home educated or religious based educated people who do not know the first thing about being citizens and thus, they are in the process of destroying this democracy.
So, while we might worry about Egypt and the entire Middle East, we have plenty to worry about right here at home.
IOVHO,
Regards,
Joe
To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.
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