Khairat al shater biography templates

In late May, Egypt will ostensibly hold its first open presidential elections in nearly six decades. But the Muslim Brotherhood suspects treachery. This past Tuesday's disqualification of ten presidential candidates, including Brotherhood leader Khairat al-Shater, has convinced the group that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which has ruled Egypt since Hosni Mubarak resigned last year, is conspiring against it to ensure the election of a non-Islamist president who would restore the country's autocratic order. In response, the Brotherhood has vowed to "protect the revolution." It is directing its energies against the SCAF, running a replacement presidential candidate and calling for mass demonstrations. This aggressive approach is undermining the legitimacy of Egypt's transition.

The Brotherhood's animosity toward the SCAF is a relatively recent development. For the first 12 months following Mubarak's fall, the Brotherhood appeared to be working in tandem with the military junta. The SCAF legalized the Brotherhood's newly formed political party, Freedom and Justice, and administered parliamentary elections that the Brotherhood won handily. Meanwhile, the Islamist organization refrained from criticizing the SCAF, even endorsing the March 2011 constitutional amendments that legitimized the SCAF's control of Egypt's transition, and, after assuming control over the parliament in January 2012, appointing a retired general to chair the legislative committee that handles military issues. Cooperation seemed so smooth that many assumed that the SCAF and Brotherhood had agreed to accommodate each other's needs and thereby control Egypt's political transition jointly.

Despite this reciprocal relationship, however, the Brotherhood continues to mistrust the SCAF. To begin with, the group remembers that when it last cooperated with Egypt's military rulers during a political transition -- after the 1952 Free Officers Revol

__Translator's Note: After his release from prison in March 2011, the Deputy Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) Khairat Al-Shater was reportedly tasked by the Brotherhood's Guidance Council to perform a comprehensive review of the movement's overall strategy in post-Mubarak Egypt. This new strategy, which is supposed to reflect the fact of the MB's rise as the most powerful political force in Egypt today, has often been referred to as "The Nahda Project." (Nahda means "Renaissance" or "Rise".)__

__We know very little about Al-Shater as politician. He has been described as the "Iron Man" of the Brotherhood movement. As one of Egypt's most successful businessmen, his prestigious stature within the MB's ranks might be attributed to his financial support to the movement. His prestige also derives from the enormous personal suffering that he has endured for the MB's cause: He has spent more than half of the past two decades in prison, and his property has been confiscated twice in the same period. Al-Shater, moreover, has very strong business ties across the region: in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, among other places. He is also said to be a major supporter of Hamas.__

__When the Muslim Brotherhood sought to bring down the present Prime Minister Kamal El-Ganzouri and his cabinet, it was not surprising that their nominee for the office was Khairat Al-Shater. When, more recently, the Brotherhood failed to force their will on the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, the movement decided to renege on all of their reassuring promises since the outbreak of the Egyptian Revolution in 2011 and run a candidate in the upcoming presidential elections. Once more, this candidate was Khairat Al-Shater.__

__Therefore, the importance of Al-Shater and his project cannot be exaggerated. The following text is a complete English translation of a lecture Al-Shater gave in Alexandria, Egypt on A

CAIRO // As protesters across the country demonstrated against Mohammed Morsi for a third straight day today, another Muslim Brotherhood figure was beginning to draw nearly as much attention as the president himself.

Khairat Al Shater, deputy leader of the Brotherhood and a major financier of the group, now regularly features on protest posters and in chants decrying what protesters describe as the Brotherhood's secretive and conspiratorial ways. On Monday, a group of men including police officers fired guns at Mr Al Shater's family home in the suburb of Nasr City and arrested his driver on charges of "assaulting a police officer", according to Mr Al Shater's son, Saad.

Last Wednesday, protesters in the Nile Delta city of Mansoura looted three discount supermarkets of the Zad chain owned by Mr Al Shater's family. Police refused to intervene, according to Saad Al Shater.

"I'm not surprised because the police have been attacking us and arresting us for 40 years," he said in an interview on Tuesday afternoon, referring to the Brotherhood's long history of tangles with the police and intelligence apparatus under Hosni Mubarak, the former president. "They take us to court, fabricate charges. We are only disappointed that they have returned to these old ways and joined demonstrations when they should be protecting all citizens."

Rarely appearing in media or granting interviews, Khairat Al Shater has built up a reputation of being a powerful back-room operator in the two and a half years since a popular uprising forced Mubarak to resign.

Mr Al Shater was the Brotherhood's presidential candidate a year ago but the electoral commission disqualified him because of a criminal record - the result of trumped up cases from the Mubarak regime - pushing Mr Morsi, a backup candidate, centre stage.

Ever since, Mr Al Shater has been the quiet strategist pulling the strings of the presidency