Is the Arab world capable of democracy?

This has been the $64,000 (plus applicable sales taxes) Question since at least the start of the war in Iraq in 2003.  Perhaps the real question should be how the Arab world defines "democracy," as Salim Mansur explains:

In the long run, everything can likely work out and Arabs hopefully may learn to distinguish between mobocracy, as a tyranny of the majority, and democracy, as a rule of law, in which minorities are protected as equal members of society.
But in the long run, as Lord John Maynard Keynes — the revered economic guru of the liberal-left — pointed out the obvious: “In the long run we are all dead.” What matters is whether in the short or medium term Arab politics can break out of its closed circle of traditional consensus that frowns upon innovation as heresy.
The problem is culture. Arab culture, despite tremendous changes that have occurred elsewhere in the world, remains resilient in adhering to traditional values of patriarchy and the tribal order of father (leader) knows what is best for his tribe or nation.

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