Egypt was a Muslim country long before there was a religious party. During the three decades of Mubarak’s Washington-backed autocratic rule, the United States shunned the Brotherhood as Islamist fanatics. And now the Brotherhood is all right and it’s the Salafis who are fanatics. It is time to think again about the relation that the West is often quick to draw between religion and backwardness on the one hand, and secularism and modernity on the other. For the Middle East, as it emerges from Western-back tyranny, becoming “secular” is not necessarily the answer to its problems.