Which trend will prevail among the world's 1.4 billion Muslims-violent confrontation or peaceful coexistence? Will Islam aspire to political power, or will more mystical or pietistic versions of the religion win out? People whose job is to wrestle with those questions, be they theologians or strategists, always keep a close eye on Egypt: the home of Sunni Islam's greatest university, al-Azhar, and the country where political Islam, in many different forms, was incubated. And the good news, from Islam-watchers in Egypt, is that the appeal of the most violent kind of Islamist radicalism has been waning for some time.
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