In the year since its revolution, Egypt’s Islamist politicians have presented themselves as moderates who can be friends with the West and tolerate non-Muslims at home.

But before the country’s first free presidential election on Wednesday, the two main Islamist candidates have moved to the right, attacking western decadence, threatening the country’s alcohol industry and demanding closer implementation of Sharia law.

The Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Mohammed Morsi, an American- educated professor of engineering, this weekend called for the release of Omar Abdulrahman, the Egyptian so-called “blind Sheikh” jailed for life in America for incitement to terrorism.

Wednesday’s election to replace Hosni Mubarak and the interim military government has gripped the country, with thousands enthusiastically attending rallies across the country.

It has also highlighted the paradox that, according to a recent opinion survey, most Egyptians both favour Turkish-style multiparty democracy and Saudi Arabia’s strict implementation of Sharia law.

Polls suggest that the election front-runners are two secular politicians with ties to the old regime – Amr Moussa, a former foreign minister, and Ahmed Shafiq, Mr Mubarak’s last prime minister – and two Islamists, Mr Morsi and Abdulmoneim Aboul Fotouh, an independent “liberal Islamist”.

Mr Aboul Fotouh says he wants a pluralist political system and that under Sharia no one can be forced to adopt a Muslim lifestyle, such as, for women, wearing the headscarf. His moderate stance and record of opposing Mr Mubarak has won the support of many liberals.

”He is someone who can be extremely powerful in bridging the divide between Islamists and non-Islamists,” said Hossam Bahgat, head of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, one of the country’s best- known activists.

But as the Brotherhood’s formidable grass-roots organisation has swung into gear, Mr Aboul Fotouh has changed his tone. At a rally in the Nile Delta, a lower-middle class Brotherhood heartland, he devoted much of his speech to conservative views of the role of women. “Egyptian women teach the younger generation to kiss the heads of their fathers,” he said. “They devote themselves to their family.”

Western countries had “neglected” family life, he said. “They have opened up society to commit all sins – sex, drink, everything,” he said. “We are all soldiers in the project of Islam,” he went on to say. Mr Aboul Fotouh’s shift began about the time he won the endorsement of the ultraconservative Salafi movement, which took more than 20 per cent of the vote in December’s parliamentary elections.

Last week, he said he would close down Egypt’s indigenous alcohol industry, which produces wine and beer. Although no candidate wants to ban alcohol outright, as in Saudi Arabia, Salafis have demanded its sale be stopped, allowing Christians to consume it only in their homes.

”Yes, I know that 8 per cent of the state budget comes from alcohol taxes, but we as Egyptians are in need of other industries such as technology and the needs of the army,” he told a television interviewer.

Mr Morsi is from the Brotherhood’s conservative wing, whose victory in an internal power struggle led to Mr Aboul Fotouh’s resignation last year. His campaign has promised to review Egypt’s liberal laws on the right of women to divorce, and he has taken up the slogan, “The Koran is our constitution”.

In an attempt to regain Salafi support, he called for the release of Mr Abdulrahman, whose imprisonment in the United States has become a common demand of radicals.

“We will raise injustice and oppression inside Egypt and outside Egypt, and especially the release of Sheikh Omar Abdulrahman,” he said on Friday.

The polls suggest that in the run-off after the first round of voting Mr Aboul Fotouh will face Mr Moussa, who is campaigning as a liberal nationalist, perhaps prompting him then to shift to the middle ground. But a televised debate between Mr Aboul Fotouh and Mr Moussa rather showed them driving each other apart.

Mr Aboul Fotouh admitted he believed in “the rulings, not just the principles” of Sharia, and insisted that Israel was an “enemy”, not just an adversary, as described by Mr Moussa.

Emad Gad, a political scientist and one of eight Christian MPs, said Mr Aboul Fotouh never hid his Islamist roots. “He is one of them – he always says that frankly,” he said.

At the Nile Delta rally, Salafis were out in force, saying Mr Aboul Fotouh was the best interim candidate until Islamists could re- establish the universal Muslim Caliphate. “We have to compromise,” said Mahmoud Amin Gadallah, 31. “Sharia is not an illusion for us — it’s something we have tested before in history and we want to turn back to that model.” (© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2012. 05/21/12)