Editing Anwar Sadat (section)

=== Unpopularity and conspiracy theories ===
The last years of Sadat's presidency were marked by turmoil and there were several allegations of corruption against him and his family. It has been said that he was assassinated "at the peak" of his unpopularity. In January 1977, a series of 'Bread Riots' protested Sadat's economic liberalization and specifically a government decree lifting price controls on basic necessities like bread. The riots lasted for two days and included hundreds of thousands in Cairo. 120 buses and hundreds of buildings were destroyed in Cairo alone. The riots ended with the deployment of the army and the re-institution of the subsidies/price controls.

Earlier in his reign Islamists had benefited from the `rectification revolution` and the release from prison of activists jailed under Nasser but Sadat's Sinai treaty with Israel enraged Islamists, particularly the radical [[Egyptian Islamic Jihad]]. According to interviews and information gathered by journalist Lawrence Wright, the group was recruiting military officers and accumulating weapons, waiting for the right moment to launch "a complete overthrow of the existing order" in Egypt. Chief strategist of El-Jihad was Abbud al-Zumar, a colonel in the military intelligence whose "plan was to kill the main leaders of the country, capture the headquarters of the army and State Security, the telephone exchange building, and of course the radio and television building, where news of the Islamic revolution would then be broadcast, unleashing - he expected - a popular uprising against secular authority all over the country."

In February 1981, Egyptian authorities were alerted to El-Jihad's plan by the arrest of an operative carrying crucial information. In September, Sadat ordered a highly unpopular roundup of more than 1500 people, including many Jihad members, but also the Coptic Pope and other Coptic clergy, intellectuals and activists of all ideological stripes. All non-government press was banned as well. The round up missed a Jihad cell in the military led by Lieutenant [[Khalid Islambouli]], who would succeed in assassinating Anwar Sadat that October.

According to Tala'at Qasim, ex-head of the Gama'a Islamiyya interviewed in ''Middle East Report'', it was not Islamic Jihad but the Islamic Group (''al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya'') that organized the assassination and recruited the assassin (Islambouli). Members of the Group's 'Maglis el-Shura' ('Consultative Council') – headed by the famed 'blind shaykh' – were arrested two weeks before the killing, but they did not disclose the existing plans and Islambouli succeeded in assassinating Sadat.