There is a broadly circulated analysis that places all the Islamists running for Arab Spring elections in the same basket, whether at the level of the region or within individual countries. It is as if a single political program governed the behavior of all Islamists, making it seem as if there were a single architect for all Islamist movements, especially in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco, the countries that have witnessed popular suffrage that has placed the candidates of the Islamist movement at the top of the list of winners, and perhaps in other Arab countries which might turn to free and fair elections. Such an analysis implies the assumption that a single set of principles governs secret and opposition work as well as public work and the exercise of power, regardless of the necessities that govern each of these two cases – and also the assumption that all of these movements have come out of the cloak of the Muslim Brotherhood, and that their policies have been under the control of the group's international leadership, regardless of the circumstances of each country and the necessities they entail. Yet a closer examination of the three electoral situations, Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt, makes it clear that only inasmuch as Islamist movements come closer to the national common grounds in their own country do they gain credibility and representative legitimacy, making them part of the permanent political and administrative structure in their countries. It is true that there are reasons and motives connected to the experience of the previous phase, whether in terms of the relationship with power as an opposition movement or in terms of organizational experience and of political and financial resources, that have made the Islamists top voting results. But it is also true that there are core differences between radical Islamist groups of various kinds that have seized this opportunity to rise to the surface and push their extremist slogans, and between groups with a religious frame of reference that are searching for their place among the country's national constituents – even if political opportunism has sometimes imposed electoral alliances between these groups. And one can expect for the main challenge faced by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to lie in how to deal with Salafists, fundamentalists and radicals, and not just with liberal and leftist movements. There is a simple reason for this, which is that there are national common grounds between the Muslim Brotherhood and these movements, represented by the frame of reference of the state and the nation, while radical Islamist groups want to completely reconsider the meaning and the frames of reference of such a national identity. This in fact is the challenge faced by the Renaissance Movement (Nahda) in Tunisia. It is true that the movement is engaging in negotiations of a purely political nature with other Tunisian parties that won in the elections in order to reach an agreement over how to manage the transitional period and draft the constitution. Yet these negotiations would have been the same had any party other than Nahda won the elections, which makes the latter a national constituent that shares general national bases with the other constituents. This is at a time when radical groups are coming out to thrust upon it the social challenge represented by intermixing, the niqab and frames of reference. Those are challenges which the movement sought, before and after the elections, to provide definitive answers to, especially in terms of respecting individual freedoms and the frame of reference of the law and the constitution. In Morocco, the Justice and Development Party (PJD – Parti de la Justice et du Développement), which won the elections and is entrusted with forming the new government, has made a final decision regarding its frame of reference. Indeed, it announced that the monarchy (the depository and pillar of Moroccan patriotism) represents a “red line” for it, which places it in the same national position with other Moroccan parties of various orientations, in the face of the radical Islamist Al-Adl Wal Ihsane movement which opposes the Moroccan monarchy. It thus becomes clear that the fact that Islamists who have been victorious in the elections share with the other political constituents of their countries a single national frame of reference takes away a great deal from the delusion of a supposed international Islamist organization. Furthermore, it imposes on each of them adapting to national factors, instead of upholding the general slogans that were raised during the phase of opposition or secret activity. This also means that the Islamists' current electoral victory is connected to the nature of the Arab Spring, and that different circumstances could bring other political parties to power, making rotation and alternation of power between Islamists and other political groups a natural matter under a single national frame of reference, not a duty imposed by a higher power.
