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Ayman Nour, a former member of the Egyptian parliament & the founder of the Al-Ghad (Tomorrow) party, was arrested & imprisoned in January 2005 on charges of forging signatures in connection with the establishment of the party, charges that he strongly denied & that were widely regarded as spurious. Released in March 2005 & allowed to run for the presidency, Nour finished second in the September presidential elections with more than seven percent of the vote. In December 2005, however, he was sentenced to five years in prison. In June 2006, the letter below from Nour to Edward McMillan-Scott, vice-president of the European Parliament, was smuggled out of prison. Adapted from the source document.

Focusing on Islamism in Egypt, this chapter argues that although the state can exercise the power of coercion, it has had to negotiate some of its power with religious groups and institutions, including al-Azhar, Salafists, and the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood. The chapter discusses the power dynamics among the various Islamic institutions and groups in Egypt, as well as the relationship between those actors and other religious minorities. The chapter concludes that the successive Egyptian governments have sought to tighten their grip on the religious sphere to curb the power of religious institutions while allowing them to substitute for the state's welfare programs.