The ‘Arab Spring’, inaugurated on 14 January 2011 by the deroute of Tunisian President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, unexpectedly prevented the region from seeing the end of a long ‘authoritarian winter’. The protest dynamics were initially characterised by a lack of leadership on the part of pre-existing partisan oppositions and the use of landmark words (‘dignity’, ‘freedom’, ‘liberation’), none of which could claim a monopoly. Subsequently, actors using the lexicon of political Islam — the Muslim Brotherhood, but also, in Egypt, some of the newly acquired Salafists, but on different lines of political action — played some prominent roles everywhere. After decades of ostracisation, or a ban, Islamists have not only been included in electoral consultations, but they have also succeeded everywhere in winning them. Their ability to ‘play the game’ of emerging pluralism then denied the doxa of pessimistic propheties, which confined them to the register of violence...