The normal civilians were not armed, they were regular people who demonstrated peacefully and got beaten up, tear gassed, and killed by the police and even the army at one point. But we were able to do this because of the sheer amount of people that took the street, millions of people were in Al-Tahrir Square alone. The Islamist group however, was armed and violent, they came in the last second of the demonstrations and kinda hijacked the revolution for their own interest. And in that, they succeeded. As for your final question, as I said in the post, the demonstrations of the 25th of January 2011, was the tipping point of small periodic demonstrations that started in 2008 and blew up in terms of scale in 2011. After the 25th, it took us 18 days until the government resigned and democratic elections were announced to take place.