Tunis, Tunisia - Twenty-year-old Maryam Hamim was dressed in black and carrying a guitar case as she stood in the doorway of a fashionable café in downtown Tunis.
A music student, she was one of the protesters who went out on the streets in the mass demonstrations that caused Tunisia's president of 23 years to suddenly step down and sparked a wave of protests throughout the Arab world that continue to this day.
But now she said she feels that the protest she took part in has been hijacked by religious political groups and that the freedoms she fought for will be restricted by the Islamist party that won the recent elections in Tunisia.
"The fact is when we went out, no one was Islamist," Hamim said about the protests in January. "We didn't ask any religion. We just said we want to take our freedom. The Islamists didn't go out with us on Jan. 14th but then they took the revolution for themselves."
While the protests in Tunisia — and elsewhere in the Arab world — were largely leaderless, secular mass movements, it is Islamist parties that are set to triumph in the first round of post-revolution elections.
Still, many analysts said they believed Tunisia would be a model of democratic values such as protection for religious minorities and women's rights.
The winner in Tunisia's first free elections held last month was Ennahda, an Islamist group that had been banned under the former regime. It won 89 out of the 217 seats, more than three times its closest rival.
Egypt, which shed its dictator Hosni Mubarak in February, will hold its first free elections starting Nov. 28 and polls show the Islamist parties are ahead. In Libya, which ended the regime of Moammar Gadhafi in October, Islamist groups are organizing for elections that may be held as early as June.
Tunisia's new leaders have assured international observers and their own people that they will not call for stricter religious laws in the country. But some here say that as time passes, the Islamists could push for stricter laws and that a more socially conservative culture will emerge.
"After two or three years they will say to women that they have to wear the veil. It could be like Iran. That's the nightmare," Hamim said.
Ennahda's election campaign focused on rooting out corruption and reviving Tunisia's economy and experts pointed out that it is these issues that the new transitional government will initially be focused on.
"In the short term, Ennahda's priorities seem focused on immediate challenges, most importantly reviving Tunisia's economy and boosting investor confidence, rather than addressing controversial issues like women's rights which could alienate the party's coalition partners and the international community," said Haim Malka, a Middle East expert from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
But Malka added that this calculation could change.
"Ennahda's long-term strategy for shaping Tunisian society remains unclear at the moment," he said.
One woman explained that she feared her freedoms would be curtailed not by legislation but by a change in popular attitudes and a growing confidence among more conservative members of society.
"If (a man) stops you in the street and says 'please sister put on the veil,' he knows that he will not be punished. He got power from the election," said Rima Aloulou, a civil engineer.
"Ennahda will not exert legal means on these things but the people who believe it will exert it. You can criticize the system but you can't criticize religion," she said.
Ennahda's popularity stems in part not from its ideas but from respect for its history of opposition to the former regime.
Banned for decades, many of the group's leaders were forced into exile or imprisoned. But the party's success also reflects the attitudes of the majority of the population.
"The previous legislation of Tunisia was extremely secular but the population did not necessarily share this view," said Frederic Volpi, director of the Institute of Middle East and Central Asia Studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
"There is an impression that the revolution is actually more secular, more liberal, more educated than it actually is," Volpi said. "Some of the voices from this popular revolt have not been heard very much. They tend to be the less educated, the less secular. But they were also part of this process and they are being reflected in the electoral results."
"Many people love Ennahda," said Achraf Fachraoui, a man living in downtown Tunis. "But here in Tunis, we don't love it." He added that people in the capital were less conservative than elsewhere in the country.
"We don't practice our religion so much here in Tunis," Fachraoui said.
Another man in the capital said that he is openly atheist and had recently received death threats on Facebook.
"They say 'we see your picture, we are coming to kill you,' " Hatem Mejri, 28, said. "I am afraid. I'm planning to leave Tunisia soon."
Last year Mejri fell in love with Noor Ben Khamis, 25, a religious woman. But the relationship ended because of their differing views.
Wearing a headscarf tightly wound around her head, she joined him in a café in Tunis to discuss what Ennahda's victory meant for her as a supporter of the party and a devout Muslim.
"I feel that my life is different now," Khamis said.
"People are getting more into religion and that proves that there was something wrong with religion in Tunisia before," she said. "Now for the first time we feel free to practice our religion."
For now Hamim said she felt confident her voice would be heard in the new Tunisia where regular political protests continue to take place in the streets .
"I am not afraid of Ennahda," she said. "I evicted the old dictator. I can evict a new dictator."