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late.
    By the late Seventies, the Brotherhood had been brought back to life by a huge transfusion of young blood. It came by absorbing new Islamist movements that began to flourish on the university campuses in the decade that followed the defeat in 1967. The most important figure in this trend was Abdul-Moneim Aboul-Fotouh, who in 1975 would become the president of Cairo University’s Student Union.
     
Nasser, his regime and his oppression, were broken, which allowed us to openly express our religious belief once more. Therefore, as university students we succeeded in creating an Islamic wave which was not affiliated to any trends, neither Muslim Brotherhood nor anything else. But our movement belonged to the Islamic identity in its simplest and shallowest forms. It had no depth. This continued until 1974 or 1975 when the Muslim Brotherhood leaders started to get out of prisons. For us the Ikhwan were the heroes of Islam, they were executed, thrown in prisons, etc. We embraced them and because they were older, it was natural for us to put them at the top of the movement, the popular Islamic trend.
     
    The Brotherhood leadership walked out of jail to find themselves able to take over, shape and absorb a newly rejuvenated Islamic movement into the Ikhwan fold.
    The moment that best reflected this new-found confidence of the young Islamist movements was a live debate between Student Union president Aboul-Fotouh and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. It is still talked about in Egypt today, because during it Aboul-Fotouh publicly mocked Sadat, while Sadat angrily demanded the young Islamist show him some respect. ‘It was really not planned, it just happened,’ Aboul-Fotouh told me with a wide smile.
     
I honestly did not expect Sadat to be that angry because I did not mean to offend him. After the event my colleagues came over and started bidding me farewell, but luckily the meeting was on air, so I was saved. But Sadat made sure I was never appointed in any university, although I was top of my class at medical school. My father was really horrified, because rumours spread that Sadat ordered his guards to kill the student who had talked and to run him over with a car on the spot. For months later, my father, the poor man, would suddenly be frantically running around campus looking for me after hearing new rumours of my death, to make sure I was still alive!
     
    Over time with the new members came new ways of working, less secrecy and less blind obedience. During this period the Brotherhood publicly renounced violence. As it evolved it also moved decisively into tackling people’s physical, not just spiritual, health. Its new leadership, some of whom are still influential figures today, spoke out about the poverty and corruption that were gnawing at the country. The Brotherhood began to fill the gap left by the failures of the state. Its legendary pragmatism was now used to find practical solutions for ordinary people rather than just self-preservation for the movement. This approach brought them new members, many of whom came from the middle classes. The Brotherhood also by now had a new leader, Omar al-Tilimsani. When he took over in 1973 he was supposed to be another façade for the Special Apparatus, but he was cannier than al-Hodeibi.
    Early on in his leadership many members were still heavily influenced by the radical thinking of the men from the Special Apparatus, which was still in thrall to the ideas of Qutb. He balanced out the influence of the radicals by introducing more moderates to the leadership group. He then managed the two sides until Sadat’s assassination led to the more extremist elements all being locked up again.
    In 1981 Ambassador Kurtzer was doing his first tour in Cairo as a young political officer at the US embassy in Cairo:
     
Six to eight months before the assassination the ambassador pulled us together and said: ‘There’s something wrong here. I don’t want to see anyone in the embassy,