Can Freud speak to religious people? He can. And he did. But he spoke to them to show the illusion of their faith. Like Comte and others before him, he saw humanity outgrowing religion. The new humanity was mature enough to see the silliness of religious faith. They only needed a prophet to point it out to them. Freud was that prophet. It is perhaps ironic that Freud, who construed religion as an infantile illusion, used a strikingly religious language. But he was not alone in this. Feuerbach, Marx, Engels and others, while launching relentless attacks on religion (well, primarily Christianity), thought of themselves as the prophets of the new world they had promised. Freud was no exception.In contrast to the modernist claim that reality is what appears and there is nothing behind it, Freud looked for what was hidden. Unlike the Enlightenment rationalism that described the human person as rational, logical and calculative, Freud saw something dark in him. Human reason cannot be trusted, he reasoned, because it ultimately succumbs to the desires of the id or the ego. In fact, the most essential nature of the human person is not the light of reason but the dark and evil forces of the ego, symbolized most powerfully by Oedipus. Human civilization is not the story of enlightened and rational human beings working for the good of each other but the brutal struggle of unchecked egos to dominate the world.This is a dark view of human nature and can be contested on several grounds. Yet, there is enough tragedy in human history to justify Freud's view. Freud's psychoanalysis seeks to show what lies beneath your problems by uncovering layers of consciousness and letting you see the problem for yourself. The ultimate cure comes not from the doctor but from you.If Freud were alive today, he would have thought many of his theories have been proven by the madness of the modern world. The nihilism that underlies much of popular and "virtual" culture and the loss of the human person in the mechanization of the world system supply further evidence for Freud's fear that modern civilization will not release humanity from its worse fears. In addition, greed, egotism, violence and xenophobia coupled with anti-Semitism and Islamophobia all have created a climate of insecurity and mistrust that undermine all efforts, religious or secular, to create and nurture a more humane and just world.With a reference to Freud, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman laments that "there are so many conflicting dreams and nightmares playing out among our Middle East allies in the war on ISIS that Freud would not have been able to keep them straight." Friedman selects the fight against ISIS as a field of conflict in the Middle East and makes a simplistic and yet convenient list of "good allies" versus "bad boys." The reality is of course more complicated than that. Freud would have found many things hard to explain. The continued occupation of the Palestinian lands or the fact that Western democracies are the biggest arms producers of the world easily come to mind as abnormalities of a supposedly modern, civilized world-order. A Freudian analysis could also prove useful to explain why Western democracies support the coup regime in Egypt on the grounds that they need Egypt for Israel's security and that they need to support al-Sissi to finish off political Islam. As Emad Shahin notes, Mubarak's acquittal on Nov. 29 sends a message that the Mubarak era in Egyptian has not ended. But more importantly, this is a message to Western democracies that are back to supporting secular authoritarian governments in the name of containing political Islam.The paranoia about political Islam is now dominating the Arab centers of political power. It is finding support among Western governments as well. The paradox is that the lumping together of moderate political groups and parties together with al-Qaida and ISIS is a useful political tool but a deadly strategy that gives legitimacy and ammunition to al-Qaida, ISIS and other extremist groups. Yes, Freud would have found it amazing how some keep failing to see the simple link between the suspension of democratic processes and the rise of radicalism in Arab politics.Freud interpreted dreams as wish fulfillment where one's aspirations for a better life take countless different forms in a dream state. The dreams of justice, peace, equality and security in the Middle East have turned into nightmares thanks to proxy wars and power struggles that are wreaking havoc in lands stretching from Libya and Yemen to Iraq and Syria. Demonizing political Islam is once again a convenient tool and the Western silence over it is telling, to say the least.In the final analysis, one does not need a dream interpreter to understand why democratic processes fail in the Arab world and how it is all blamed on political Islam. Increasingly, this is turning into a wishful dream about a Middle East in which the demand for freedom, justice and equality for all is expected to be jettisoned so that "our good boys in the region" can continue doing what they are doing.