Understanding Egypt's Worldly Miracles

Egyptians performed a miracle in the great public squares of their cities in January 2011. The whole world watched mesmerized as the ordinary people of Egypt, Muslims and Christians, brought spiritual power into Egypt's Tahrir Square to stage their extraordinary revolution. Millions joined hands in cities throughout the country to crash through formidable barriers of violence and fear. The tyrant who had ruled Egypt cruelly for three decades was swept away.

It is no wonder that Egypt's revolution confounded the policy pundits and academic experts, the Mosad and CIA operatives who swarm all over Cairo, and even the countless brave souls who acted as the revolution's agents. No planning, no calculus of politics or economics, no abstract speculations of "tipping points" that tally accumulating causes or "swans" of any color telling us to expect the unexpected can diminish the wonder of so momentous an event.

Those averse to metaphysical explanations have no hope of understanding what transpired. Quite clearly, revolution in Egypt was impossible. Just consider the odds. The greatest power on the planet had spared no expense to keep America's man in Cairo in power. Mubarak's Egypt boasted a gulag of prisons and concentration camps with torture machines second to none. The dictator and his cronies were protected by a military of half a million and an even larger force of a million and a half security police. The hated central security police swarmed all over the land, dressed in their black uniforms and with shields and truncheons in hand. They had as their sole responsibility the elimination of "enemies," i.e. the brutal repression of any who might be tempted to act on the mildest criticism of the regime. In Cairo and the major cities, the security forces were always just around the corner, packed into transport trucks in side alleys or left standing to bake in the sun for hours on end. They were poor, undernourished, and abused young men from the villages and slums, tormented themselves by a regime that trained them as torturers of their own brothers and sisters.

And just who provided the inspiration to challenge this Leviathan and its American enablers? The spark was struck in distant Tunis by Muhammad Bouazizi, an unemployed university graduate whose unlicensed fruit and vegetable cart was confiscated by police. He could not accept one more humiliation, so he set his body on fire in protest. From Alexandria came the unbearable spectacle of Khaled Sa'id, a beautiful young man who radiated innocence and decency, savagely beaten to death in full view of family and neighbors. Overnight, Egyptians by the thousands became Khaled Sa'id. In Cairo a very passionate Asma' Mahfouz, looking impossibly young and just like everyone's...