* '''People all over the Arab world feel a sense of pride in shaking off decades of cowed passivity under dictatorships that ruled with no deference to popular opinionswishes.''' And it has become respectable in the West as well. Egypt is now thought of as an exciting and progressive place; its people’s expressions of solidarity are welcomed by demonstrators in Madison, Wisconsin; and its bright young activists are seen as models for a new kind of twenty-first-century mobilization. Events in the Arab world are being covered by the Western media more extensively than ever before and are being talked about positively in a fashion that is unprecedented. Before, when anything Muslim or Middle Eastern or Arab was reported on, it was almost always with a heavy negative connotation. Now, during this Arab spring, this has ceased to be the case. '''An area that was a byword for political stagnation is witnessing a rapid transformation that has caught the attention of the world.'''
** [[w:Rashid Khalidi|Rashid Khalidi]], in [http://www.thenation.com/article/158991/arab-spring "The Arab Spring", in ''The Nation'' (3 March 2011)]
