Muslim Brotherhood

CAIRO - It was a recent Saturday night at the U.S. Embassy and a delegation of more than 100 American business leaders was rubbing shoulders with Egyptian counterparts, some of them affiliated with the newly dominant Muslim Brotherhood. Hassan Malak, a longtime Brotherhood leader, sat on a couch in deep conversation with an economic official from the embassy as executives from Boeing and Cisco floated through the crowd. Malak, who made his fortune selling furniture and software, was blunt.

Its members handcuffed and taken to prison, the Muslim Brotherhood is facing an extensive police crackdown that appears certain to weaken the standing of Egypt's largest opposition group in Sunday's parliamentary elections. More than 1,200 Brotherhood members and sympathizers, including eight candidates for parliament, have been arrested in recent weeks, the organization says. Most were reportedly detained in the governorate of Sharkeya in the Nile Delta, an Islamist stronghold characterized by poverty and frequent tensions.

CAIRO - He doesn't inspire and few would call him charming but Mohamed Morsi is within reach of fulfilling the Muslim Brotherhood's 84-year-old dream of imposing political Islam on an Egypt that for generations has been dominated by harsh colonial and secular masters. The 60-year-old presidential candidate speaks of inclusion even as ultraconservative clerics herald him as the leader a new Islamic caliphate. He has reached out to Egyptians with a kaleidoscope of unpolished sound bites - while calling Israelis "killers" and "vampires" - but the Brotherhood's opaque nature has masked Morsi's deeper political intentions if he and his fellow Islamists end up controlling the government.

Opposition groups including the banned Muslim Brotherhood held landmark talks Sunday with Egypt's vice president, but the two sides remained at apparent loggerheads over opponents' principal demand: that President Hosni Mubarak step aside now. The government offered a number of new concessions that would have constituted an undreamed-of bonanza for the opposition only a few weeks ago. But demonstrators in Cairo's Tahrir Square shrugged off the...

Mamoun el-Hodeiby, leader of Egypt's banned Muslim Brotherhood opposition group, has died. He was 83. Officials of the fundamentalist group in Cairo said El-Hodeiby, who led the group for the last 14 months, died of natural causes late Thursday. El-Hodeiby was the sixth "general guide" of the Muslim Brotherhood, which advocates turning Egypt into a strict Islamic state and has been outlawed for 50 years.

Egypt's main Islamist party and other opposition groups are strengthening their appeal by using images of desperate Palestinians streaming out of the Gaza Strip to provoke wider protests against President Hosni Mubarak's 26-year-old government. Demonstrations in Cairo and throughout the country by the Muslim Brotherhood and other political groups ostensibly have been staged to declare Egyptian solidarity with the residents of Gaza.

When King Hussein reopened the doors of Jordanian democracy two years ago, the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood's solid showing at the polls sent a political message to the palace. Now the king has sent a message back. At a pivotal moment in Arab-Israeli relations, the king last month appointed Taher Masri, a veteran politician and Palestinian moderate, to head the new government. The fundamentalists could get with Hussein's peace program or take a walk.

CAIRO - His phone doesn't ring and his charts are gloomy. But every day Mostafa Ismail, a financial broker with a hangman's demeanor, steps into the Egyptian stock exchange hoping for positive blips. They are rare in a nation where revolution has brought two years of political instability and turned "investor confidence" into a quaint phrase from a more prosperous era. "The market has declined as far as it can go," said Ismail, his tie loosened, a string of numbers before him. "There's no one to trade or buy or sell with.

He has been jailed, his computer has been seized, his blog is tracked by intelligence officials, and Mohammed Shawkat Malt concedes that his latest political quest appears doomed. A gregarious lawyer in a pale suit, Malt, a member of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, has filed court appeals to get his name on the ballot for Tuesday's municipal elections.

An Egyptian military tribunal Tuesday sentenced leading members of the Muslim Brotherhood to long prison terms in the government's latest effort to weaken the country's strongest opposition voice. The court sentenced 25 members of the banned Islamist organization to as many as 10 years in jail on charges that included terrorism and money laundering, officials said.