With protests fading in Tunis and seeming to have peaked in Cairo, it is time to ask whether Tunisia and Egypt will complete democratic transitions.
I have been visiting both countries, where many democratic activists have been comparing their situation with the more than 20 successful and failed democratic transition attempts throughout the world that I have observed.
One fear should be dismissed immediately: despite worries about the incompatibility of Islam and democracy, more than 500 million Muslims now live in Muslim-majority countries that are commonly classified as democracies—Indonesia, Turkey, Bangladesh, Senegal, Mali and Albania.