Is the Middle East More Secular?

Is the the Middle East becoming more secular?

That’s what historian, Juan Cole, author of the New Arabs, suggests in this fascinating short interview for Lip TV.

He argues that most Arabs are becoming increasingly secular. The current generation, born in the 1980’s, is different from their parent’s generation. It is more literate, more urban, more wired, and less religiously observant. Cole notes that in Lebanon and Tunisia, the younger generation is starkly more secular.

In Egypt, he sees a movement away from fundamental Islam, noting that men with beards and women who are “overcovered” are harrassed.