The death of Mohamed Morsi in an Egyptian courtroom on June 17 marked one more turn in Egypt’s tortuous political drama of the past eight years. Morsi had been a member of the long-repressed Muslim Brotherhood. He became the country’s first democratically elected president in 2012 following the Arab Spring protests. But a military junta deposed him a year later and launched a wide assault on the group he led. He had been in prison since the coup.
On First Person this week, Shadi Hamid recounts the rise of the Brotherhood in Egypt, the drama of the country’s democratic moment, and his own meetings with Morsi. Hamid is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam is Reshaping the World.
