TEHRAN — Sixteen years after Iran's revolution launched militant Islam as a powerful modern political force, the broader Islamist movement has fractured, deeply, into diverse and often disparate strains--in some cases even rivalries.

The emerging Islamist spectrum in the mid-1990s ranges from the religious right elected to Kuwait's Parliament, where it is demanding sexually segregated classrooms and accountable government, to Egyptian militants trying to overthrow a secular state.

Most groups want an Islamic state based on or guided by the religious values spelled out in the Koran. But visions of that state vary significantly. Some limit their agenda to enacting legislation to conform with Islamic law, or Sharia. Others stress conforming society to religious values through everything from education to entertainment. Still others are willing to share power with secular parties and other religions.

The most notorious is the minority that advocates a rigid Islamic state in which all aspects of life follow the strictest religious interpretations. But even among these hard-liners, very few actually want a state headed by a sheik, ayatollah or any of the many titles conferred on Muslim religious leaders.

Despite pervasive stereotypes, the tactics of about 20 major Islamist groups also differ widely.

In contrast to Islamic Jihad's suicide bombing that killed 21 people at a bus station in Israel last month and the ongoing executions of intellectuals by Algeria's Armed Islamic Group, Saudi Arabia's Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights distributes monthly newsletters, and Morocco's Justice and Charity movement performs humanitarian work.

Leaders of the most energetic force in the Middle East also span the spectrum, from a Sorbonne-educated lawyer and a petrochemical engineer to turbaned Muslim clerics steeped in the learning of millennia-old seminaries.

Islamists are now so diverse that an old adage has been popularly adapted: In any country where there are two Islamists, there are three movements--sometimes at odds under one umbrella.

Even Iran, which in the late 1970s aspired to unify all Islamist groups and create a modern Islamic empire, now acknowledges the diversity.

"Islam has become a serious force throughout the Middle East and North Africa, but the groups have developed without much connection to each other," said Mohammed Javad Zarif, Iran's deputy foreign minister.