Here is one of the best commentaries on the events of Tunisia of Egypt by Asef Bayat who first wrote about post-Islamism in Arab countries. He makes some interesting observations about a new Arab street that is not animated by political or religious ideologies but mostly by requests for democracy and human dignity.  Here is one good argument from this article that will be tested in the next few days, months and years to come:

"The ‘middle class poor' are the new proletariat of the Middle East, who arevery different from their earlier counterpart -- in their college education,knowledge of the world, expectations that others have of them, and witha strong awareness of their own deprivation. Muhammad Bouazizi, the streetvendor who ignited himself and a revolution in Tunisia represented this ‘middleclass poor.' The politics that this class pursued in the 1980s and 1990s wasexpressed in Islamism as the most formidable opposition to the secularundemocratic regimes in the region. But Islamism itself has faced a crisis inrecent years, not least because it is seriously short of democracy. With theadvent of post-Islamist conditions in the Muslim Middle East, the ‘middle classpoor' seems to pursue a different, post-Islamist, trajectory."

Let's see how things will evolve from here, but I agree with Bayat, this is the dawn of a new Arab political reality.

Apparently, President Mubarak is about to speak in a few moments and the speculations on what he will say are open and wide.