Islamists look for gains in Egypt's freer politics

Liberals and leftists, including the youth activists who led the protest uprising against Mubarak, are caught between their stance that all sides must be allowed to enter the political game if Egypt is to be a real democracy and worries whether Islamists will play by the rules.

"I think there is too much Islamophobia," Khaled Abdel-Hameed, one youth leader, said of fears of Islamists hijacking the process. "Everyone is trying to hijack the revolution, including me. If people elect religious groups, I will respect their choice."

Another activist, Mustafa al-Nagar, is more concerned.

"I am worried most about the Salafis because they are not accustomed to politics," said al-Nagar, who campaigns for Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace laureate and potential candidate in presidential elections due in November. "Their main concern is to exclude anyone else."

While the Brotherhood has long been Egypt's best organized opposition movement, the Salafis are a new player in politics. Salafis are ultraconservatives, close to Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi interpretation of Islam and more radical than the Brotherhood. They seek to emulate the austerity of Islam's early days and oppose a wide range of practices they view as "un-Islamic" — rejecting the treatment of non-Muslims as citizens with equal rights as well as all forms of Western cultural influence.

Salafis traditionally stayed out of politics, rejecting democracy because it replaces rule by God's law with the law of man. The movement grew in recent years because it was tolerated and even encouraged by the Mubarak regime to counter the Muslim Brotherhood.

With Mubarak gone, the Salafis have abandoned their disdain for politics.

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