This time the Islamist revolution was peaceful and power was captured through the ballot box, but the anti-Islamists overturned the will of the people with the backing of the military.
The echoes of the violent counter-revolution will reverberate through much of the Arab and Islamic worlds. Egypt is a pivotal state and what happens inside its borders matters well outside it. It is not the Islamists who have warned that Islam is not compatible with democracy. Rather, their opponents have demonstrated that democracy cannot be reconciled with political Islam even when it is peaceful.
In December 1991, Islamists won the first round of elections in Algeria and were poised to win the second round in early 1992, but were prevented from taking office and exercising power by the military which stepped in. Just like in Egypt today, the military hand-picked a ruler. We can only hope that what followed is not replayed in Egypt. With the generals banning Islamist parties, an underground militant insurgency took hold. For the rest of the 1990s Algeria was wracked by a brutal civil war which claimed around 200,000 lives and whose appalling legacy still lives on in the memory of the people. More than 50 protesting people being shot dead by the army in Cairo is not an auspicious start to the new political dispensation.