During the long-lasting presidency of Hosni Mubarak, the Muslim Brotherhood went through different stages of social and political development and activity, becoming a formal participant in the political process, being a banned and persecuted opposition group, or both.
Under President Mubarak, the government waged decades of psychological warfare against the Brotherhood and presented the Islamists as a dire threat to the country, using them as a justification for its own heavy-handed one-party rule and frequently imprisoning the movement's members [REF].