Good thing we got rid of that pro-American dictator, huh?

Niall Ferguson warned us. Back in February he said the country would be ruled by a military junta until elections came, at which point the victors would be the Muslim Brotherhood and their Islamist brethren.

Leftists (and even some gullible righties) thought he was crazy. The country’s secular! The revolution is demanding freedom! Revolutionaries include Christians! They’re young people wanting secularism!

Not so much.

CAIRO — Islamists claimed a decisive victory on Wednesday as early election results put them on track to win a dominant majority in Egypt’s first Parliament since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, the most significant step yet in the religious movement’s rise since the start of the Arab Spring.

The Muslim Brotherhood? They have no interest in power! The people don’t want them! They’re a fringe group these days!

The party formed by the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s mainstream Islamist group, appeared to have taken about 40 percent of the vote, as expected. But a big surprise was the strong showing of ultraconservative Islamists, called Salafis, many of whom see most popular entertainment as sinful and reject women’s participation in voting or public life.

How commanding of a majority will these groups have?

Analysts in the state-run news media said early returns indicated that Salafi groups could take as much as a quarter of the vote, giving the two groups of Islamists combined control of nearly 65 percent of the parliamentary seats.

The few true liberals (classical sense) on the country’s political scene were “unable to compete” with the Islamists. A leader of the reformers said liberals (again, classical sense) “were washed out”.

Are you ready for the worst news? Here ya go:

 Although this week’s voting took place in only a third of Egypt’s provinces, they included some of the nation’s most liberal precincts — like Cairo, Port Said and the Red Sea coast — suggesting that the Islamist wave is likely to grow stronger as the voting moves into more conservative rural areas in the coming months. (Alexandria, a conservative stronghold, also has voted.)

Following the “Arab Spring”, Islamists have dominated new governments in Tunisia, Morocco, and now Egypt. They’ll almost certainly play a major role in post-Gaddafi Libya, too. Someone should have listened to Niall.