When Muhammad Morsi was elected president of Egypt a year ago, this newspaper was wary. As fervent supporters of liberal democracy, we are uncomfortable with the belief of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mr Morsi's party, that politics are subsidiary to religion, and are downright hostile to the attitudes towards women and minorities that pervade the Islamist movement. We would have preferred the secularists who led Egypt's revolution to have won. Yet we recognised that Mr Morsi's 52% of the vote-a stronger endorsement than Barack Obama got five months later-gave him the right to rule. And, most of all, we were delighted that after 30 years of dictatorship, Egypt was on its way to becoming a democracy.
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