History of the Republic of Egypt
On 22–26 July 1952, the Free Officers, a group of disaffected officers in the Egyptian army founded by Gamal Abdel Nasser, and headed by General Muhammad Naguib, initiated the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 with the overthrowing King Farouk, whom the military blamed for Egypt's poor performance in the 1948 war with Israel and lack of progress in fighting poverty, disease, and illiteracy in Egypt. In the following two years, the Free Officers consolidated power, and, following a brief experiment with civilian rule, abrogated the 1953 constitution, and declared Egypt a republic on 18 June 1953, Muhammad Naguib as Egypt's first President.
Islamic extremism in the 20th-century Egypt
During the 20th century, Egypt experienced several waves of revolutions to regain control of their nation from colonial rulers as to create a modern nation-state. Much of Egypt was Muslim at the time although there were significant numbers of Jews and Christians as well, but many of the political revolutions that Egypt experienced were centered on religions and how they related to politics. “The result was an ideological conflict over the direction of the Egyptian nation, over who had the legitimate authority to determine the direction,” and “by the 1930s a pattern of radical politics had taken hold across the Middle East.” In 1928, Hasan al-Banna founded the Society of Muslim Brothers, or Muslim Brotherhood, a prototype of the contemporary Islamic extremist movements. At this time, the revolutions were causing outbreaks of violence rooted in the political upheaval, but the Brothers denied to view their position as anything but religious. Like the Kharijites before them, the Brothers firmly believed that the law could only follow the guidelines that God had set for them. The Brotherhood rose to popularity through the 30s and 40s, and still had a significant membership in the 1950s, when Gamal Abdel Nasser began to rise to power.