The Arab Spring, once heralded by many as the beginning of something beautiful and promising, is now a dark nightmare; legions of reactionary interpreters of Islam take hold in North Africa, Syria today is set to become like Yugoslavia in the 1990s, voices of racial and sectarian intolerance abound from Gulf to ocean (as pan-Arabists once liked to collectively refer to Arab lands) and, last but not the least, the demographically triumphant Palestinians remain under effective apartheid rule.