Since the fall of Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, secular activists striving to form new political parties have been fending off serious challenges from the mainstream Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s most organised political movement, and anti-democratic radical fundamentalists.

The Brotherhood, founded in 1928 to promote a conservative, religion-based agenda and to struggle against British colonialism, has been outlawed but tolerated since 1954. The parent of other Muslim religious movements, it has established clinics, schools and welfare organisations for the poor as well as a political wing that predicts it will gain 25 per cent of seats in parliament in the coming election.

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