The book has re-read historical, intellectual, and political trends, as well as political and civic activism, a rereading that indeed reveals that both autocracy and liberalism are rooted in and have shaped concomitantly social and political developments in the region, even though they have embodied different communities and occupied different -- and at times parallel -- socio-political and cultural spaces. This rereading also reveals a liberalism that is rooted in the region’s political history and exposes an original, organic, dynamic and adaptable, enduring, and significant and relevant contentious movement that is hidden in plain sight.