i'm richard hyde. i'm wondering if you could, professor hafez, could you tell us more about -- sunni and shia modernizers or updaters, or however you wish to characterize them? do they get along well with each other? if so, how? how do they differ from one another and so on? >> what i would say is that i have not looks at the shia counterparts, if you will. but i think this is an area where there are limits on the modernizization or the moderation, i should say, ever the tendency. the [ speaking in foreign language ] tendency, even -- recently goes and says what's happening. bahrain is more sectarian not a genuine democratic revolution which is very dispinting to me, but that just shows you these are politicians and they have to abide by, you know, their networks of support and now sources of support and so on. but the fundamental divide between sunni and shia i think create as problem in terms of a general unity based on an islamist identity. where you can have a general unity as in this notion that,

i'm richard hyde. i direct the religion consulting group. i'm curious about other bases of identity in the countries that you're talking about. they all speak arabic. they're mostly s lly muslim. what differentiates a tunisian from a mor rocken from an egyptian, et cetera. there must be lots of other things going on here. >> well, i mean, you know, there are unlimited differences. these are overlapping identities. the arab that the tunisian speaks is not the arabic that i speak. nor is the

i'm richard hyde. i direct the religion consulting group. i'm curious about other bases of identity in the countries that you're talking about. they all speak arabic. they're mostly muslim. what differentiates a tunisian from a moroccan from an algerian from an egyptian, et cetera. there must be lots of other things going on here. >> well, i mean, you know, there are unlimited differences. these are overlapping identities. the arab that the tunisian speaks is not the arabic that i speak. nor is the french in the arabic the tunisian speaks, the little french that i know. there are differences in history. there are differences in colonial history and colonial influence. there are differences, the kind of historical sediment of, for example, the morgaba regime and the attempted secularism in law, even, in tunisia is something for a quite long period of time, is something that's quite different than what was experienced in egypt, for example. so there are, you know, there are similarities, but there are differences. these are multiple overlappin

. >> i am richard hyde. i am curious about other bases of identity in the countries you are talking about. they all speak arabic, they are mostly muslim, but what is to the french rate a tunisian, an algerian from a tunisian -- from an egyptian? >> if there are unlimited differences. these are overlapping identities. the arabic the two nations speak is not the arabic i speak, nor is the french arabic. there are differences in history, a colonial history and theonial influence, copp attempted secularism in tunisia is something that is quite different than what was experienced in egypt. there are similarities, but there are differences. of these are multiple overlapping identities. i do not know what else to say. >> besides comparison from country to country, the biggest difference between countries is cuisine, to me. within countries, i think there are a lot of tensions. in syria, the majority is excluded. the sunni and shia are excluded. some of the internal tensions -- even ones that are about religion are