In Egypt, the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood – the militant Islamist movement that became a political party – had been on the rise well before the Arab Spring. Although the Brotherhood initially refused to participate, the disunity of secular forces allowed it to rush in and fill the moral void after that revolution. But unlike the founders of the Islamic Republic of Iran who purged the army, controlled the bazaari(the urban commercial class) and took root in the rural religious population, Egypt’s leaders (as they told me at the time) believed that the army, economy and affection of the people would fall into line if the Brotherhood’s leadership first managed to control the messaging and Ministry of Information.