Arab uprisings

I like Sami Zubaida a lot.  I met him in the 1990s when he spent a semester teaching at UC, Berkeley and I got to know him and like him a great deal. Even when I disagree with him politically, I have respect for him. So I will disagree here:  "After decades of the dominance of religion and ethno-religious nationalisms in the region, the "revolutions" in Tunisia and then Egypt seemed to eschew religion and nationalism in favour of classic political demands of liberty, democracy and economic justice."  Well, I think that the situation varies from one place to another and one can't generalize.  People in Tunisia and Egypt, for example, opted for Islamists and they clearly could not care less about social justice.  If anything, Islamists (whether Sunnis like Ikhwan or Shi`ite like Hizbullah) are very conservative on economic issues and are rather more pro-capitalism than the regimes that they wish to replace.  I also think that we can't say that people eschewed nationalism altogether, especially in Egypt.  I think that Sami is talking about Arab nationalism (and that is debatable), but the Egyptian uprising was inspired by a heavy (annoying) dosage of Egyptian nationalism.