Contributor(s): Professor Gilles Kepel | Far from the misconceptions of the "Arab Spring" or the "Islamist Autumn", the upheavals of the Arab world over the last three years unfolded along a number of lines of understanding - some local, others regional or global - that were intricately mixed. Professor Gilles Kepel, who has extensively travelled the Middle East since Spring 2011 and met with many of the conflicting actors of the crisis, from Tunisia to Syria and the Arabian peninsula, introduces a contextual analysis of the events rationale, based on his award-winning travelogue Passion arabe [the Arab Passion].