Khairat al-Shater

Khairat al-Shater was born in 1950 into a middle-class family in Daqahliya province. As a teenager, he was influenced by socialist ideas and joined the secret “al-tanzim al-tali‘i” organization, which apparently landed him in prison for several months at the age of 18.21 An engineering student at Alexandria University in the early 1970s, he showed increasing religious fervor and was close to the first Islamic student association, the Religious Association.22 On graduating from university in 1974, he settled in the city of Mansoura, where he met members of the Muslim Brotherhood who had just been released by Sadat after being sentenced under Nasser for belonging to the Organization of 1965, accused of plotting a coup d’état against the head of state. Under their influence, he joined the Brotherhood.