Khayrat al-Shātir is generally seen as the financial leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. He was elected deputy to the Supreme Guide of the organization in 2003.

He was born May 5, 1950, in al-Daqahilīyah governorate, Egypt. He first became politically active in the Socialist Youth Organization in the mid-1960s while attending secondary school. Later, he changed his political affiliation and was a founding member of general Islamic activities in Alexandria in 1967. He remained active during his university years and was imprisoned once during this time. After his release in 1968 he was drafted for the army and served in a small town near the Red Sea.

He joined the Muslim Brotherhood in 1974. The same year, he attained his BSc in engineering from Alexandria University and later a Master in Construction Management from Mansūrah University in 1980. He worked as an administrator at Mansūrah University from 1974, until President Sādāt suspended him from working there in 1981. This suspension was described by egyptwindow.net1, a website close to the Brotherhood, as part of a general crackdown on opposition forces in September 1981 in which Sādāt had approximately 1500 individuals from different groups arrested.2 Al-Shātir was not detained because at this time he was in London studying for a PhD. He stayed in London until 1986 but changed his career and took up working in business.3 While in London, he also became active in Islamic centers in London. Through this he was able to cement his relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

From 1981 onwards he has established a number of private companies. In 2007, a former official in Egypt's state security estimated al-Shātir's wealth to be approximately $ 87 million.4 One of his companies was the Salsabīl software company set up in partnership with Hasan al-Malak in the mid-1980s. The company became the pivotal point in a large case against the Brotherhood in 1992, when the Egyptian government confiscated the property of the company. The large number of files confiscated were later said to contain the Muslim Brotherhood's "plans to overthrow the regime." 5Al-Shātir remained imprisoned for one year, and the property of the company has remained confiscated ever since.

He has subsequently been arrested three more times. In 1995, he was elected to the Guidance Office of the Brotherhood6, and the same year he was convicted to 5 years in prison for belonging to a banned organization.7 In 2001, he was detained again for 1 year and December 14, 2006 he was detained again along with 39 other leading members of the Brotherhood. In January 2007, President Mubārak referred their case to a military court. At the time of writing the trial is ongoing. (see more under Political/Religious Involvement).

Khayrat al-Shātir was elected Deputy of the Supreme Guide in 2003.

In later years, Khayrat al-Shātir has attained a number of additional degrees and diplomas in various fields8:

- Islamic Studies diploma, Islamic Studies Institute, Cairo, 1999.
- Diploma in Business Administration, Faculty of Commerce, Ain Shams University, 1998.
- Diploma in Social Work and NGOs, Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University, 2000.
- Diploma in International Marketing, Faculty of Commerce, Helwan University, 2000.
- B.A from Anthropology Department, Faculty of Arts, Ain Shams University, 2002.

Khayrat al-Shātir has spent time in Yemen and Saudi Arabia in addition to travels in a number of European and Asian countries. He is married and has 8 children. Full name: Muhammad Khayrat Sa^cd al-Shātir
Common ways of spelling: Khayrat al-Shater, Khairat al-Shatir, Khairy el-Shatir, Khairat al-Shatter.

" Board member in a number of big companies and major banks.

Financial leader of the Muslim Brotherhood
Khayrat al-Shātir is an engineer and a businessman. He is generally seen as the financial leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and chairs their Fund Committee.9 He has been active in Islamic, political activities since the 1960s but remained largely unknown to the public until what became known as the Salsabīl case in 1992. In this case, the land of al-Shātir and his partner's computer company, Salsabīl was confiscated along with the documents and computers of the company. The subsequent investigation revealed a large number of confidential documents belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood dealing with their financial and organizational structures and allegedly containing the Brotherhood's "plans to overthrow the regime."10

There have been speculations in the Egyptian media that al-Shātir was able to raise his personal fortune through the Muslim Brotherhood's activities. Particularly through exhibitions of durable goods organized during the 1980s through the professional syndicates where the Muslim Brotherhood had gained power at that time.11 In 2006 Hamdī Rizq, an Egyptian journalist, estimated that the Brotherhood receives approximately 16 million Egyptian pounds in membership contributions every month.12 A large part of this money goes toward funding parliamentary election campaigns for the Brotherhood's candidates. The secular magazine, Rose al-Yūsuf claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood issued a fatwá prior to the parliamentary election in 2005, saying that it is permissible to pay the Muslim zakāh to the Brotherhood's Fund Committee, which finances election campaigns.

Generation Gap
Until the Salsabīl case in 1992, al-Shātir was largely unknown to the public and he continues to be very restrictive in giving interviews. This might have contributed to him being seen as close to the "old guard" in the Brotherhood. This "old guard" is often portrayed as preferring to operate in secret as opposed to more reform-minded members of al-Shātir's "middle generation" generation, who campaign for a more direct and unambiguous involvement in parliamentary politics.13 Al-Shātir's wing has even been described as "extremist Qutbiyūn," referring to the radical, Islamic thinker and Brotherhood member, Sayyid Qutb who was executed in 1966.14

When Khayrat al-Shātir was elected deputy of the Supreme Guide in 2003, this was largely seen by external observers as a blow to the more reform-oriented wing of the Brotherhood headed by leading politicians like ^cIsām al-^cIryān and ^cAbd al-Mun^cim Abū al-Futūh, who had both been speculated as possible successors to the post. Observers point out that the reform-wing has work to set up an Islamic, political party independent from the main organization of the Muslim Brotherhood, whereas al-Shātir favors the current unified structure since setting up a party would require them to allow Christians in.15 All have publicly denounced that there is any controversy between the different generations.

Position on democracy and dialogue:
In his public statements, however, al-Shātir has repeatedly stressed the democratic objectives of the Brotherhood. In an article published in The Guardian after the Brotherhood won 20 % of the seats in the 2005 parliamentary elections, he stated:

"We believe that the domination of political life by a single political party or group, whether the ruling party, the Muslim Brotherhood or any other, is not desirable: the only result of such a monopoly is the alienation of the majority of the people."16

And

"The objective must be to end the monopoly of government by a single party and boost popular engagement in political activity."17

In an interview published in March 2006 by Ikhwanweb, the Muslim Brotherhood's official English language website, he further states that:

"The Muslim Brotherhood have won a popular mandate after the last elections which requires us to continue to coordinate with all other parties and civil society institutions, regardless of their ideologies, for the sake of the country's best interests."18

In the same interview, he stresses that the Brotherhood

"hold no grudges against the people of the west in general. However, we object to certain policies by some western governments towards the Middle East, in particular, and the Muslim world in general as well as the rest of the world."19

In two recent cases of international confrontation between Muslims and the Western world, he has denounced in harsh words both the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in September 2005 and Pope Benedict XVI's speech in September 2007.20

However, in both cases he has called for peaceful reactions as the best way to refute these perceived attacks on Islam. In regards to the Danish cartoons he furthermore called for UN to initiate a law to safeguard the "respect of the holy symbols of all nations and cultures."21

"Reconquring Egypt"
Two days after the article published in The Guardian, al-Shātir was attacked by the Egyptian magazine al-Musawwar that accused him of having signed a document that called for the "conquest of Egypt" in style with the first conquest by Muslim forces in the 7th century.22 The statement was immediately denounced by al-Shātir in the magazine al-cArabī as a falsified document.23

The Government's new strategy
On December 14, 2006, Khayrat al-Shātir was detained along with other leading Brotherhood members and the assets of 34 companies belonging to members were frozen.24 This was seen by many observers as an unprecedented escalation in the governments dealing with the Brotherhood, since they had not targeted the financial resources of the organization before.25 The charges filed against the detainees included money laundering, involvement in terrorism and forming paramilitary militias along the line of the Iranian Revolution.26 These accusations go beyond the usual charges against Brotherhood members for belonging to a banned organization.

The accusations about forming militias, is related to an incident where a number of students affiliated with the Brotherhood, dressed like fighters from Hamas, staged a demonstration inside the campus of the Azhar university in December 2006. This demonstration constituted the immediate pretext for the clampdown.27