Egypt's first democratically chosen president. Egypt's first democratically chosen president, Muhammad Morsi ends sixty years of military domination of politics and heralds historic moment in the new Arab awakening. His challenge is to restore the most populous and pivotal Arab country to re-occupy its place as the cultural pole of the region. The most important man in the Middle East, Muhammad Morsi started 2012 as much a stranger to the people he now rules as he was to the rest of the world. But his successful brokering of a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, in 2012, had given him widening international and domestic support, a feat unmatched by any other Arab leader in the modern era. Elected to parliament several times under Hosni Mubarak's rule, Muhammad Morsi served as an independent in the Brotherhood's parliamentary bloc from 2000 to 2005. He became a spokesman for the Brotherhood and in 2011 after the uprising forced Hosni Mubarak to step down he became chairman of the Freedom and Justice party. He forced the retirement of several high-ranking military officials who wielded power after Hosni Mubarak's ouster. The son of a rice and cotton farmer, Muhammad Morsi grew up in the fertile Nile delta in the province of Sharqiya. He was encouraged by his family to pursue his studies. He studied engineering at Cairo University in the 1970s before moving to the US, in 1982, to complete a PhD in materials science at the University of Southern California. He also worked for NASA. He later returned to Egypt and became head of the engineering department at Zagazig University and rose in the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood.