Cynthia Farahat, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, is an Egyptian national and founder of the Liberal Egyptian party, which was the first secular capitalist classical liberal political party in the history of modern Egypt. She has co-authored several books in Arabic, including Desecration of a Heavenly Religion, which analyzed and criticized Egypt’s blasphemy law. The book was officially banned in Egypt by al-Azhar University in Cairo in 2008. Cynthia’s work on countering Islamic terrorism has led Lebanon’s intelligence officials to bar her from entering the country. She also received hundreds of death threats from Islamists and was placed on an al-Qaeda affiliated hit list. Recently she has briefed more than 50 Congressional offices and has encouraged them to support classifying the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, based on her personal story and research into the nature of the Brotherhood from a cache of thousands of previously undisclosed documents. Violence against her family and her associates, including her brother's abduction and numerous threats to her life prompted her to flee to the United States, where she was granted political asylum.She is currently a columnist in the Egyptian daily newspaper Al-Maqal and is writing a book in English on the Muslim Brotherhood.