MERE REACTION:

Islamists have done well before in elections in Turkey and Indonesia, the closest that the Muslim world gets to mature democracies. Hardline parties in Indonesia reached a high mark in 2004, at 21% of the vote, but have fallen off since. After a few turns at the polls, says Anies Baswedan, president of Paramadina University in Jakarta, "people don't vote for you because you're Muslim. People ask, what are you going to deliver for us?"

This is what explains the electoral dominance of Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP), not its roots in political Islam. In the past decade under the AKP, Turkey escaped an IMF-run intensive-care ward and became the world's fastest-growing economy. The rigid Kemalist secularism enforced by a dominant military was partly dismantled. In its place has emerged a more dynamic society, more tolerant of differences. The AKP does have a mild-to-festering authoritarian streak, depending on whom you believe, but that's rooted in Turkish as much as Islamist political culture.

In any case the appeal of political Islam, which grows when religiosity is repressed by nominally secular regimes, tends to diminish over time in Muslim countries with freer politics. Why?

When the state isn't hostile to religion, ideological Islam isn't a bankable political issue. Elections usually turn on more pedestrian matters. The AKP re-election campaign last June was all about the thriving economy. 

By supporting Islamist candidates, Egyptians aren't voting for theocracy. Conservative lower- and middle-classes make up majorities that, for decades, were shut out of the establishment. To them, the Islamist brand suggests opposition to corruption and a common touch. For many, a vote for Islam was the most obvious rebuke to the ancien regime in a first free election.

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