Islamists appear to have taken a strong majority of seats in the first round of Egypt’s first parliamentary vote since Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, a trend that if confirmed would give religious parties a popular mandate in the struggle to win control from the ruling military and ultimately reshape a key U.S. ally.

Conservatives who have condemned the Arab Spring as a prelude to religious totalitarianism have mostly been vindicated by the outcome of this election. The power of the majority only equates to liberal democracy if that majority respects the rights of the individual.

Salafis had flourished for years in Egypt, but under Mr. Mubarak most had turned away from politics because they believed that law should come from God and not man.

But after the president was overthrown in February, opening the possibility of democratic change, some Salafis began to argue that by seeking office they could carry out God’s law through Parliament.

Nothing pisses me off more than this sort of lie. That government should come from God. That government could come from God. Governments are institutions of men. Men govern. Men who claim to carry out God's law presume themselves to be the embodiment of God's will. How arrogant is that? These men are just men and the government they create will be a government of men, with the special feature that criticism of its policies will be considered heresy, a feature this lie is designed to evoke, to place the liar's corruption beyond question - a reality that no healthy democracy can sustain.

And when they did turn to politics, they were able to rally an existing and organized network of as many as two million to four million Egyptians, said Shadi Hamid, a researcher at the Brookings Institution in Doha, Qatar.

“The Salafis have been underestimated from day one, because it is hard to imagine how this guy with a long beard and some aggressive ideas can actually gain much support,” Mr. Hamid said. “But elections are about organization and manpower, and they have a core group of supporters that is very mobilized.”

In Egypt, “liberals don’t have two million core supporters,” he added, “and they never will.”

The mistake that our culture has made is to emphasize democracy when our own Constitution and our civil liberties are massive caveat to it. The desire for democracy is a dangerous oversimplification.