Do you advocate democracy in the Middle East, which might indeed very well result in increased influence for the Islamist parties - as we saw in Palestine's elections back in, what was it, 2006? - or do you say, no, screw democracy, it's better to maintain the dictatorships as long as the dictators keep out the Islamists. Despite, of course, the fact that most of the dictators, for all that they're secular, do get involved in religious matters and suppress different religious opinions, just to keep the Islamists happy.

In the case of Egypt, you have to wonder what secularity it is, exactly, that you're defending, when you know what the regime did to Nasr Abu Zayd, a Muslim theologian who dared to question certain religious dogmas: they declared his views made him an apostate, forcibly took away his official registration as a Muslim and as a consequence of that annulled his marriage, as a non-Muslim man couldn't be married to a Muslim woman. He and his now-ex-wife (by Egyptian law, anyway; her opinion was never asked) had to emigrate to the Netherlands to live in peace.