[Nine months after the rising protests against Mubarak]...the Brotherhood had reclaimed its status as Egypt’s most powerful political force following decades of suppression. In the country’s first free parliamentary elections, its newly created Freedom and Justice party won more than 35 per cent of the vote in the first round, and slightly more in December’s second round.

Even more worrying for those hoping the Arab world’s largest nation would adopt a liberal, pro-western face, fellow Islamists from the puritanical Salafi movement emerged with more than 25 per cent, a score likely to be confirmed in the third and final round of voting in January.

“This is the real Egyptian revolution,” says Jon Alterman of the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies and one of the international observers at the Egyptian elections. “In February, the military removed Hosni Mubarak. This is the revolution that reorients power in Egypt.”

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