The beginning of the end.

Are we witnessing in Cairo and in other parts of the Arab world the slow decline in the power of Islam?  It took Britain many hundreds of years to becoming a functioning democracy - it still has some way to go. In my opinion the touchstone event on this march was the execution of Charles I in 1649 - this was the beginning of the end of absolute power of monarchy. You cannot have a functioning democracy in a state where there is top down paternalist, authoritarian rule, like in many Arab states. Herein lies the essential paradox of the current uprising in Egypt. For a country to move towards democracy, there with inevitable have to be a loosening of the power of extreme forms of Islam over its citizenship. Theocratic states are totally incompatible and antithetical to free thinking people. A modern pluralistic secular society is the sine qua non for achieving this. Modernity is the big threat to these hierarchical states. In my view this is the beginning of the end - the slow long death rattle has begun. How long will it take in Egypt, Syria and other Arab countries?