...During 2004-2006 the Kifaya movement was not just Egypt's main moderate opposition force but the most important organized liberal group in the Arabic-speaking world. It began in December 2004 when participants in a small demonstration chanted that they had had "enough" (kifaya) of President Husni Mubarak's quarter-century-long rule as head of a half-century-long regime.

Thus began the Egyptian Movement for Change, best known as the Kifaya group. Those involved expected Egypt's imminent, dramatic transformation. George Isaac, the movement's coordinator, reflected what one reporter called this "delirious optimism." "The door of change is open," Isaac proclaimed "and no one can close it again. Never."

But it slammed shut pretty fast. The regime was still very much in control. In the 2005 elections, Kifaya did not do well. Of course, the elections were fixed but the Muslim Brotherhood emerged with triple the vote Kifaya received. Kifaya's presidential candidate was soon in prison. The masses didn't rise up. Liberalism clearly couldn't compete with either the regime's Arab nationalism or the Brotherhood's Islamism. Isaac now concluded: "Our people are naïve."

How, then, to compete for these "naïve" people's support? Most of Kifaya now seized the same tool the Arab nationalists and Islamists used: nationalist and religious demagoguery. In short, if you can't beat them, join them.

Aside from whether or not using this weapon helped Kifaya—it didn't—the tactic strengthened all the anti-democratic concepts which held Egypt back. They now claimed that the fault was external, not internal. The now insisted that the solution was not a freer culture and society or defeat of extremist ideologies but fighting the evil imperialists and Zionists. Yet if this is true, who needs Kifaya? Who needs internal reform? Who needs democracy?

In 2006, then, the movement made a U-turn. Rather than challenge its competitors' xenophobia, Kifaya imitated it...