That the true intentions of a religious organization, the Muslim
Brotherhood, would become the most hotly debated issue
surrounding the overthrow of Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak,
would have garnered guffaws among Western intellectuals only
four decades ago. At that time, virtually all of them—all of
us—were in the grip of secularization theory: the belief that
religion was a dying supernova, enjoying its final glow before
disappearing from history. America's foreign-policy
establishment is still under the theory's spell. On February 10,
the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper, told a
Congressional committee that the Brotherhood is a "largely
secular" organization. With equal glibness, other analysts have
declared the Brotherhood an extremist sect intent on
establishing a violent theocracy. When David Ignatius, of The
Washington Post, was in Tahrir Square for a "Victory March," he
found the sight of Egyptians staging mass prayers "unnerving."
Such is the subtlety of our secularist outlooks.