Radical Islamists are among the leaders of rebels who have toppled Tripoli and are hunting down Moammar Gadhafi but their influence can be blunted by the West before they gain power and pose a threat to Libyan democracy and to U.S. allies, foreign policy experts say.

Islamists represent about a fifth of the Libyan Transitional National Council, and Islamist militias have ransacked military weapons caches, controlling neighborhoods and taken over prisons and government offices, says Walid Phares, author of The Coming Revolution: Struggle for Freedom in the Middle East and an adviser to the Anti-Terrorism Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives.

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