President Hosni Mubarak has led the Arab Republic of Egypt since the 1981 assassination of President Anwar al-Sadat by radical Islamists. Up until now, presidential elections involved no direct competition; the president had been elected by a yes or no referendum after being nominated by a two-thirds majority of the People’s Assembly. In September 2005, challengers will face Mubarak as he seeks his fifth six-year term in the nation’s first-ever direct elections. He is expected to win easily. Mubarak’s National Democratic Party controls about 85 percent of the Assembly, including the Political Parties Committee — which determines whether new political parties are legal. In early 2005, Ayman Nour, the leader of the new Al-Ghad (Tomorrow) Party, was arrested on forgery charges and stripped of his parliamentary immunity. Nour may have posed a threat to Mubarak’s re-election, and his arrest prompted protests from the United States and other countries; they insist that the allegations are completely false. Perhaps the greatest threat to Mubarak’s rule is the Muslim Brotherhood. Founded in Egypt in 1928, the Brotherhood now has branches in as many as 70 countries. A Brotherhood member assassinated the prime minister in 1948, and another was blamed in the attempted murder of President Gamal Nasser in 1954. Though the Brotherhood has officially rejected violence for decades, it is officially banned from Egyptian politics because the state only recognizes secular political groups; nonetheless, more than a dozen “independent” members of the Assembly belong to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood’s intentions merit debate. Some argue that the group should have a greater role in Egypt, pointing to its charitable works — the Brotherhood, for example, was more effective than the government in providing for victims of a 1992 earthquake — and rejection of violence. Others defend Mubarak’s hard line, arguing that the Brotherhood’s embrace of sharia law is incompatible with democracy.