In suggesting that Islamic extremism may be, if not a spent force in the Middle East, no longer the most dynamic or important one, Robin Wright has some standing. In 1983, Ms. Wright surveyed the wreckage of the American Embassy in Beirut. Beneath it lay the remains of her friends. Two years later, Ms. Wright wrote “Sacred Rage: The Wrath of Militant Islam.” The title is self-explanatory and the topic, unfortunately, has hardly passed into obscurity.

Ms. Wright has been reporting from this region since 1973. She witnessed the Iranian Revolution. She has covered nine wars, interviewed almost every Middle Eastern figure of significance. “Dreams and Shadows” (Penguin Press, 480 pages, $26.95), her fifth book, is an account of her recent trip to Tehran from Rabat. The chapters are organized geographically and loosely linked by a thesis: Inspired by the collapse of communism and apartheid, she argues, a growing cadre of liberal activists and dissidents — aided by mobile phones, satellite television, and the Internet — now pose a significant challenge to both the region’s autocratic regimes and to its Islamic extremists.

Her subjects include Egyptian judges, Iranian clerics, female parliamentarians in Kuwait, and a host of Internet activists, the so-called pyjamahadeen. There is a portrait of a middle-age Egyptian mother, Ghada Shahbender, who was so outraged by the sight of the police beating and mauling women during a 2005 political referendum that she formed the group We’re Watching You to monitor the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections. There is a sketch of Hadi Khamenei, the younger brother of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He has been campaigning in his newspaper against the concept of absolute religious rule, and by extension, the absolute power of his older brother.

These men and women, Ms. Wright suggests, represent the dream. On the shadow side of the ledger, they have thus far been none too successful. We’re Watching You documented thousands of electoral violations, but the same corrupt and tired autocrats were returned to power — no one for a moment expected another outcome — and it is Ms. Shahbender who is now endangered, not the Egyptian government. Hadi Khamenei has been barred from running for the Assembly of Experts, and although she does not note this in the book, Ms. Wright has reported elsewhere that his newspaper has been banned by the state and his skull fractured by religious vigilantes.

This is a remarkable collection of subjects, notable particularly for their extraordinary physical courage. Ms. Wright inadvertently conveys an admirable (or perhaps insane) sangfroid in her account of traipsing alone through the slums of Beirut to see what the Hezbollah gunmen have to say for themselves. But I suspect that the larger argument of the book — that the peaceful campaigners amount to a dynamic movement and grounds for guarded hope about the region — is probably too optimistic; or at least, it’s too soon to tell.

Few would dispute that demographic change, globalization, and the rise of new communication technologies are politically significant here. Unfortunately, if Islamic extremism is no longer the most important, interesting, or dynamic force in the Middle East, as she says, it is nonetheless a very close contender, and no one quite knows where the conjunction of these massive forces — demographic change, Islamic extremism, and the rise of the Internet culture — will lead. Liberal reformers, alas, are not the only ones who have figured out how to use the Internet and satellite television to get their message out. I live in Turkey, where concern about the radicalizing influence of satellite broadcasts from, for example, Al-Manar, the Hezbollah propaganda channel, is acute, and it is acute for good reason.

As for Turkey, even though Ms. Wright takes the title of her book from the words of Kemal Atatürk — “Away with dreams and shadows! They have cost us dear in the past” — she scarcely mentions the country But Turkey is a perfect and fascinating exemplar of many of the trends with which she is concerned, as well as an excellent illustration of their limits.

Turkey is surely the most open and successful country of the region, Israel apart. There are reformers, activists and pyjamahadeen aplenty here. But without doubt, the state still has the upper hand. The government regularly throws activists in jail and blocks access to the Internet. YouTube, at the time I write this, is inaccessible because someone, somewhere on the planet, posted a video depicting Atatürk in a monkey suit. Indeed, having received Ms. Wright’s book to review here in Istanbul, I went to the Internet to see what others had said about it. When I entered the relevant search terms, I found this:

Access to this site has been suspended in accordance with decision no: 2007/195 of T.C. Fatih 2. Civil Court of First Instance.

When I no longer happen upon this message three times a day, I’ll believe the dreamers are on the ascendant. Until then, I hope Ms. Wright is correct, and I applaud the men and women she describes — but I’m hedging my bets.

Ms. Berlinski lives in Istanbul. She is the author of “Menace in Europe: Why the Continent’s Crisis Is America’s, Too” and the forthcoming “There is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters.” She has also written two spy novels.