Obviously there's been a lot of hype about the revolution in Egypt, but I think people are overreacting to this revolution and expecting a "free country" to emerge. Sure, Egyptians want to replace a despot with a democracy, but the Egyptian population isn't as liberal as it might appear. From April 12th to May 7th, the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project looked at the views of people from 7 muslim countries, including Egypt. Here are some shocking statistics: 59% of Egyptians define themselves as fundamentalists, 2% think that islam's influence on politics is a bad thing, 82% support stoning as a punishment for adultery, and 84% support the death penalty for apostates. Clearly, Egypt in not modernized in its social viewpoints. So although the idea getting rid of Mubarak and establishing a democracy is accepted well in Westerner's eyes, it doesn't seem like this new democracy will be modernized whatsoever in it's people's ideologies. With that in mind, I don't think that Egypt will make much progress in terms of becoming a "free nation" as Westerner's see it anytime soon. The change from absolutism to democracy is only a fraction of the reform Egypt needs in order to, in my opinion, become a free country, and I don't see this reform coming anytime soon. While the introduction of democracy is great, just remember that Egypt has a long way to go in order to become the nation that many people think will be born over the next few months from the current revolution.
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