Brandjack News

By Quentin Langley 

It seems that in Egypt the internet and cell phone services have been down all day. It has affected the quality of reporting from Cairo, of course. The purpose was to stop people organising protests against the government. 

It should have been obvious that there are two huge holes in this plan. Most people will have interpreted the absence of internet and cell phone services as a clear message that there is a protest under way. It will also have reminded them why they don't like Hosni Mubararak. 

The second hole is that today is Friday, the Islamic Sabbath. People went to the mosque today. That was the opportunity to mobilise, and people took it. 

Perhaps the idea was to stop secular people organising. Mubarak loves the fact that the main focus of opposition is the Muslim Brotherhood. Secular forces in Egypt and western governments have been wary of opposing Mubarak for fear that Islamists might replace him. Western support for authoritarian regimes is a mistake. I call it the Hillaire Belloc fallacy: 

Always keep ahold of Nurse

For fear of finding something worse.

The only institutions outside the state in most of the Arab world are religious. Opposition to the awful governments tends to be Islamic. But if pluralism is allowed to flourish, there is no reason to think that it will not prove as popular as in the rest of the world. And technological changes mean that information flows much more freely, even in poorer countries. These governments are going to fall. All of them. Let's hope the change comes quickly, and without the dreadful Iranian detour into theocracy. But the detour is just that. It will slow the progress to pluralism. It won't stop it.