This is a book about how religious parties come to dominate the political life of a nascent democracy – in this case, Egypt, a country that in February 2011 overthrew its long-reigning dictator, Hosni Mubarak. Meet any Egyptian, and though he or she will more often than not be religious, he or she will almost certainly be many other things besides. She may be a farmer, a parent, a worker, an inhabitant of the Ṣaʿīd, a doctor, a member of the Ḥuwayṭāt clan, an Alexandrian, or one of any number of combinations of these things. And yet, a survey of elections conducted in the two years following Mubarak's ouster would seem to give the impression that in matters political, all those identities were trumped by one: Islam. In the country's first postauthoritarian parliamentary election, held in the winter of 2011, Islamists – led by the Muslim Brotherhood – won two-thirds of the seats in parliament. Six months later, they captured the country's presidency (before being ejected from it by the military scarcely a year later).

To many observers used to being surprised by events during the so-called Arab Spring, the dominance of Islamists in postauthoritarian elections was the one thing that was expected. After all, during the Mubarak era, the Muslim Brotherhood amassed an impressive string of electoral victories that had, by the waning years of Mubarak's term, rendered it practically the sole opposition voice in Egypt's legislature.