Is this a cry for freedom or a cry for a new Caliphate, a longing for days long past when Arabs and Muslims ruled much of the known world?

Reports indicate that protestors, encouraged by the toppling of two autocrats in Tunisia and Egypt, are everywhere gathering in the Middle East — from Algeria to Iran and in many states in between.

The question before us is not whether something unheard of in modern times is occurring, but what does it mean?

Is this a cry for freedom or a cry for a new Caliphate, a longing for days long past when Arabs and Muslims ruled much of the known world? Or, on a less grandiose note, is it merely the collective resentment of those who have not shared in the economic prosperity enjoyed by elites in their countries.

What makes the situation in the Middle East fascinating and complex is that movement we see on the Arab street is probably a combination of all these groups and others as well.

For almost a century the Arab and Muslim world has been wrestling with the ideas of modernity, freedom, democracy and economic liberalism. It has not been an easy journey — and it is one complicated by the legacies of colonialism, Arab-Israeli war and superpower conflicts that embroiled the region in issues beyond its control.

The odyssey of Arab political culture has been tragic and difficult. First, it encountered the West and the ideas of democracy, freedom and liberation.  The ideas were there but so too were the British and French, not to mention, later, the Americans and the Russians and, of course, the Israelis.

Liberalism as an idea gave way to many twisted forms of monarchy, socialism, Pan Arabism, reactionary Islamism, autocracy and tyranny. Wounded Arab pride, faced with the superiority of Israeli arms and Western economic might, turned to the strong man who would restore pride — first Nasser, who had a vision of sorts, and then inferior tyrants like Saddam, Assad and Qaddafi, all promising to stand down the enemies of the Arab street. Conspiracy, violence, repression, mass murder, all were justified in the name of Arab and Muslim pride.

Now, if we are to believe Fouad Ajami, the thoughtful observer of all issues Arab over the past four decades, an authentic democratic revolution might be in the works in Egypt. That example might, I emphasize might, be stimulating similar yearnings in Algeria, Yemen, Iran, and Bahrain.

It is a delicate dance — the forces of repression are never far from the mob. The military is still the supreme source of power in the Arab state. Patriarchy and reactionary ideas still have a deep hold on many Arabs.

But we can hope. Tawfiq Hakim, an Egyptian playwright, some years ago wrote a memoir called, A Return to Consciousness. In that book he suggested that Nasser, the first great modern Arab ruler and autocrat, had mesmerized the Arab masses with his charisma and his defiance of foreigners who sought to impose their will on Egyptian and, writ large, Arab and Muslim culture as a whole.

For Egyptians, who before Nasser's revolution had not ruled themselves for a millennium, it was intoxicating stuff. It was a stillborn vision, however, rooted in the same old power games that inevitably corrupted each Arab effort to throw off the shackles of tyranny.

It is too early yet to tell if today's uprisings constitute a genuine vision or simply unchannelled frustrations — but surely well meaning observers can hope that this is a first step toward a more open democratic civil society.

An Arab world set free would not only be good for Arabs, it would be good for a global community too often brought to the abyss of violence and war by political tensions, imposed or cultivated internally, that have driven the Middle East for the past century.