The shock waves breaking over the Middle East are not the result of a so called spring of hope. They are the result of the failure of the Arab states to come up with a coherent national narrative uniting their different components and to establish modern societies where all are equals.

For centuries the Middle East and North Africa constituted a vast if amorphous Islamic entity ruled by a caliph according to the Shari’a – an entity frequently exploding into civil wars with dynasties rising and disappearing through bloody coups and assassinations.