25Nawaz Oh, many things. Let’s take Egypt again as
an example. Egypt is a conservative religious
country, yet the vast majority of Egyptian Muslims
eventually rejected the Muslim Brotherhood gov-
ernment, expressing themselves in perhaps the
largest protest in that country’s history. In doing
so they were backed by many Egyptian theolo-
gians. Unfortunately, those protests ended in a
populist military coup, rather than another elec-
tion, to oust the Brotherhood. This reinforces my
point that although conservative Egyptians didn’t
choose liberal secular democracy, they did resound-
ingly reject the Muslim Brotherhood.
Tunisia provides another example. The 2014
election there resulted in Muslim Arab Tunisians
rejecting the Nahda party’s government— a
party with Islamist roots— and voting in a secular
party instead. The good news is that the Nahda
party abdicated peacefully, even publicly endorsing
the will of the people as sovereign.
Most traditional Muslims consider Islamism an
errant politicization of their religion. These people
are extremely conservative in their own families
and lifestyles— they do pose certain core human
rights challenges— but they generally don’t want
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