A Muslim Brotherhood supporter pleads with Egyptian riot police outside a closed polling station in 2005. Cairo has since cracked down further

Only two years ago, political Islam was staging a stunning comeback across the Arab world. In the Palestinian territories, Hamas won the 2006 parliamentary elections, routing the secular and corrupt Fatah. That surprise victory followed a strong showing the previous year by Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, which gained 20 per cent of parliamentary seats in spite of fielding only a limited number of candidates.