On June 4, 2013, a month before Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, was toppled by a coup d’état, a forum was held in Cairo under the title “Islam and Democracy.” The panel’s main attraction was Hamed Abdel-Samad, whose incendiary memoir, My Farewell from Heaven, had raised suspicion among religious authorities in the country. Dressed casually in a purple polo and speaking in simple, layman’s Arabic, the 41-year-old writer addressed the small crowd of mostly university students with a message that would soon endanger his life.