(CNN) -- Sondos Asem has butterflies, formulating answers to questions she expects to be asked and practicing her diction with the devotion of a high school debate champion. The gentle 24-year-old graduate student at the American University in Cairo is in a hotel room in downtown New York, figuring out what to wear on national television. ("This blazer would look good, right?" "Should I wear more color?")Like many young Egyptians, she's been tweeting the fallout after the 2011 uprising that brought down former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The stakes are higher than 140-character dispatches might suggest. Asem has emerged as an unlikely unofficial spokeswoman for the Muslim Brotherhood, helping to run its English-language Twitter feed, @Ikhwanweb, and in turn revamp the group's image in the West.
In no more than three lines, often using abbreviations and hyperlinks, she hashes out the views of the Brotherhood, the 83-year-old fountainhead of political Islam in the region and one of the most powerful organizations in Egypt. The Brotherhood's newly established political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, has won just under half of the seats in the country's new parliament -- more than any other group -- and will have a major hand in rewriting the country's constitution. Read More
