Calls for ‘social justice’, ‘dignity’ and ‘freedom’ resonated in the Arab Middle East in 2011. The winds of change that blew and swept over the region led to attempts at revolution in some countries, as in Tunisia (Chapter 2) and Egypt (Chapter 3), and reform in others, such as in Morocco (Chapter 4) and Jordan (Chapter 5), events collectively known as the ‘Arab Spring’. This book attempts to arrive at a theory of revolution, that of a Hierarchical Dissonance (HD) in Values between rulers and ruled, a term which I coined in my 1987 study of the Iranian Revolution (Alianak 1987) and which I have modified for this study. The present book also addresses the question of why some countries underwent reforms and others attempted revolutions through the Pendulum Model which I devised in my 2007 book Middle Eastern Leaders and Islam: A Precarious Equilibrium, which depicts a dynamic, interactive relationship between rulers and ruled at times of crisis when leaders used religion to stabilise their rule. I posit here that the two monarchs I study, Muhammad VI of Morocco and Abdullah II of Jordan, used religion and survived whereas the secular leaders of Tunisia and Egypt, Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak, tended, among other errors, not to resort to the palliative of religion to equilibrate the stability of their rule, and hence did not survive.

This study hopes to contribute towards the development of a ‘fourth generation’ theory of revolution, which Jack A. Goldstone (2001) urges us to develop in the twenty-first century in order to explain the phenomenon. It also attempts to contribute to theories of reform as they apply to the Middle East.

It further theorises about the outcomes of the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and reforms in Morocco and Jordan, by asking whether the Arab Spring has been realised so far (up to summer 2013), and whether movements towards restoration are taking place where ‘stability’ is re-emphasised. Here the study introduces the concept of a ‘threshold’ beyond which the palliative of religion is not as effective as in the past in dealing with the hierarchical dissonance in values or priorities.