The internet has certainly played a role in bringing Egypt to this moment. It started years ago – something I documented in my book The Blogging Revolution – and hasn’t just appeared in the last two weeks. Instant Facebook Revolution, indeed.
As one secularist blogger put it in commenting on the protocols of online engagement: “The atheists reign in their contempt for religion, while the religious bloggers—who would not even accept the existence of non-believers in the first place—can now see some shared values.”