Two-thousand eleven is 1432 in the Hijri calendar that measures the life of Islamic civilization. However one numbers it, this year will be long remembered. It has begun with uprisings in Tunis and Cairo, a popular revolt and civil war in Libya, and the disturbance of domestic tranquility by demands for reform in many other parts of the Arab world. After long acquiescence in a regional order fixed by European colonialism and sustained by American dominance, the Arabs are standing up for themselves. The governed in this region have discovered that they can, if necessary, take back their consent to be governed and thereby compel regime change. A reawakening of the Arabs, by the Arabs, is occurring in country after country across the wide expanse of West Asia and North Africa. The age of foreign protectorates in this region has passed. With its demise come major uncertainties about the future.

The short-term effects of these uncertainties will include higher and more volatile oil and gas prices, slower recovery from the Great Recession in America and to a lesser extent in Europe and Japan, and an accelerated shift of global wealth to rising powers in East and South Asia as well as to energy producers in West Asia. I note that Citibank has just projected that, in 2050, Saudi Arabia will have the sixth-highest GDP per capita in the world. Recent events make that outcome more rather than less probable. That aside, the long-term effects of current events are less easy to forecast. They seem likely to include these:

• Liberalized and more assertively nationalistic politics in Arab countries, coupled with greater self-reliance and autonomy in their management of regional affairs

• A major reduction in the ability of outsiders — notably, the United States — to shape trends and events in West Asia and North Africa

• The further isolation of Israel

• The revival of Cairo, Baghdad and Damascus as leading actors in the affairs of the Arab East — rejoining Riyadh in that role

• A concomitant setback for recent Iranian gains in prestige and influence in a revivified Arab world

• Opportunities for Turkey to strengthen its newly prominent regional leadership

• Accelerated development of Arab ties to East and South Asia (and possibly to Russia) to offset and balance past dependence on the United States, Britain and France

• The displacement of the jihadi threat to Arab societies as milder forms of Islamism assume a larger role in governance

• If new models of consultative governance arise in the Arab world, the spread of these models to non-Arab parts of the Muslim world.