Has the Arab Spring consigned violent radicalism to dust?

Ennahda supporters celebrate at a meeting of the party in Ben Arous, southern Tunis, in October, ahead of the election.

When demonstrators first took to the streets in Tunis, Cairo and Tripoli this year to demand reform and change, nothing was more striking than their unity.

The pious and the secular, the liberals and the conservatives, the Facebook generation and the factory workers with no hope of affording a computer: all joined together to topple three dictators.

As the focus in the cutting-edge countries of the Arab Spring now shifts from street protests to elections and political transitions, however, the possibility of marrying Islamic ideals with democratic practices has taken centre stage.

The moment has come for the nations of the Middle East to prove that "people don't have to choose between Islam and democracy", said Radwan Masmoudi, president of the Centre for the Study of Islam and Democracy in Washington.

"I think this is the most important moment in the region in the past 500 years," said Mr Masmoudi, whose organisation has opened an office in the Tunisian capital.

The election victory in Tunisia of the moderate Islamist Ennahda party, the first round of balloting for Egypt's new parliament in which up to 70 per cent of the votes went to Islamist parties, and the call by the head of Libya's interim administration for a post-Qaddafi government based on Sharia, show that Islamists are going to set the region's political pace in the years ahead.

After suffering repression for decades under the fists of mostly secular-minded leaders, the Islamists are making the most of the new sense of political activism and pro-reform spirit that has swept the region.

Unlike their forerunners in the 1960s and 1970s who believed that an "Islamic state" was superior to any form of democracy, many in this new generation of Islamists have accepted democracy's centrepiece - free and fair elections - as the best way to choose a government.

A new cadre of scholars such as Tariq Bishri and Mohammed Salim Al Awa in Egypt, Rachid Ghannouci in Tunisia and Ali Sallabi in Libya has shifted the discussion away from the ideas that in the past half-century have inspired armed attacks on people, governments and symbols deemed un-Islamic or anti-Islamic. For many of these thinkers, votes - not guns - have become the name of the game.

In short, the era of Sayyid Qutb is drawing to a close, according to John Calvert, author of a biography of the late Egyptian writer who in the 1950s and 1960s established the theoretical basis for radical Islamism in the postcolonial Sunni Muslim world and became a founding inspiration for groups such as Al Qa'eda.

"Islamists of all varieties, including the remaining radicals, understand the situation has changed," said Mr Calvert, a professor of history at Creighton University in Nebraska.

"Ordinary people have taken to the streets, leaving actual or would-be revolutionaries in the dust. Many of the autocracies of the Arab world have fallen or are on the ropes as a new model of political change … has emerged. I think it's safe to say that in the Arab world, the attraction of Qutb's revolutionary doctrine is at its lowest ebb."

The Islamism rising across North Africa defies simple categorisation and is anything but monolithic. Its strains cover a broad spectrum, from the small Salafi political groups advocating radical social change imposed by the government, to Ennahda, which says it seeks to remove impediments to religious life rather than impose edicts.

Ali Larayedh, a founding member of Ennahda who was imprisoned by the Ben Ali regime for his political activities, has described his party as a champion of women's rights and the most open to the western world of any party in the region - both heretical notions to some Islamists.

"We do not reject the products of the West," he said at the political party's modern headquarters in a former telephone company building in Tunis. "There is a misunderstanding of the movement. We won't force people to pray or wear a veil. We simply want a compromise between the state and all religions in the country, not a war between both sides and not a religious state."

It is far from certain that the widespread support among Islamist groups for democratic elections also means they will promote and institute other democratic political arrangements after they take their place in government. Do they secretly plan to subvert the democratic impulse that has brought them to unprecedented political heights, planning instead - in the words of their critics - "one election, one vote, one time"?

Whether the Islamists' nods to democracy are anything more than lip service will not, of course, be known until they actually rule and face the nitty-gritty of everyday governance, where choices between rival constituencies may be made, and some will lose.

In their campaigning, North Africa's mainstream Islamist parties - Ennahda and Egypt's Freedom and Justice Party - have said they would attempt no radical changes to society. They reject assertions from secular groups that they will enforce religion or make their countries less welcome to tourism, a major foreign currency earner.

"We want to protect religion, not force it on anyone," Mr Larayedh said. But he admitted that Ennahda wanted to fight "cultural regression" and what he described as "permissiveness".

Similarly, in Egypt, several Salafist candidates for parliament have spoken of banning bikinis and limiting alcohol sales to hotels to protect Muslims from western-inspired temptation.

The governing plans of Islamist movements and political parties have so far been overshadowed by a focus on identity politics and voting along sectarian, ethnic and tribal lines. Nevertheless, Ennahda and the Freedom and Justice Party have said they are running on a platform of justice, restoring freedom to citizens and investment in health care and education.

Turkey, where there has been a successful melding of Islamist politics with a secular government, has been frequently cited as an example to emulate, especially by Ennahda officials, who are considered more liberal than the Freedom and Justice Party.

Montasser El Zayat, an Islamist lawyer and one-time cellmate of Al Qa'eda's new chief, Ayman Al Zawahiri, said Islamists were interested in ending the role of the state in promoting projects considered to be non-Islamic, such as funding for films that contain "pornography", which he defined as any relations between unmarried men and women.

Libya is more open to question. Muammar Qaddafi was deposed only in October, and full parliamentary and presidential elections are not set to take place until the spring of 2013 - enough time for the differences among Islamists to break out and splinter their potential influence at the ballot box.

The head imam at Martyrs' Mosque in Tripoli, Mohammed El Fteisi, said the country was largely in agreement on the conservative Islamic principles that society should live by, but it was "inexperienced" with politics. The situation in Libya, in other words, is uncertain and fluid.

"We are not fanatical," Mr Fteisi said. "But we don't have much political experience. We are learning to walk in terms of politics. The door is open to everything now, but we should come up with a Libyan version and not just follow someone else's example, like Egypt's."

The fear, voiced repeatedly by secular groups across North Africa, is that once in power Islamist parties could take their countries down a path towards an Iranian-style repressive theocracy.

The key, said Mr Masmoudi of the Centre for the Study of Islam and Democracy, is for every side in the current political ferment to be mindful of the views and worth of the others.

"Secular groups are also learning the importance of religion and that they have to respect the religious values of the majority," he said.

"If they want to win elections, they can't be seen to be anti-religious. This means there is going to be a coming together, a shift in both directions to something more centrist. This is the new definition of Islamic democracy: a democratic state that respects Islamic values and freedom both."