As we watch the growing protests in the streets of Cairo, Alexandria and other Egyptian cities the question we have to ask is what direction the protests will take and where Egypt is headed in the coming years. I think we all would agree that any sort of Western-style democracy is not likely in the near future. Egypt literally has thousands of years of history with little or no experience with democracy, so they are not going to evolve to it overnight (heaven knows we still haven’t figured it out yet).

However the question that does need to be considered is which direction they will start to head. One choice would involve a relatively slow process while the other could be quite rapid, and quite disturbing to the future of not only the people of Egypt but the people of the world.

Turkey is the desirable example for Egypt to look to. They are an overwhelmingly Muslim nation but they have managed to avoid the problems common to the rest of the region by establishing and keeping a relatively secular government. This doesn’t mean that the clerics do not have influence but the government itself is generally absent religious influence and the will of the people is to a large degree respected.

By contrast we have Iran, a nation which was swept by protests against a corrupt Shah and found itself moving into an equally corrupt and authoritarian regime headed by religious fundamentalists. This is obviously the outcome we do not want to see.

Already the protests are impacting our daily lives in the West through rising oil prices, but that could be just the tip of the iceberg. Should a hard-line regime be swept into power (or should it simply grab power) then we have to look over the border to Israel.

For the last 30 years the quasi peace (some call it a cold peace) between Israel and Egypt has been key to keeping relative peace between Israel and its neighbors. A hard-line anti-Israeli regime could not only end this peace but could become a leader in once again trying to strangle the small nation, or should I say the small but nuclear-armed nation.

I don’t need to say why that would be a bad thing.

Of course I am far from an expert on the region and I do expect that in the end things will work out, but it is certainly more than just the regular protests we have been seeing.