Since becoming Egypt’s president in 2014, Abdul Fattah Al Sissi, a former general, has stepped up a military campaign against Islamist militants.

He took office after a landslide election win amid wide popularity he gained for having, as a defence minister, led the army’s 2013 overthrow of Islamist president Mohammad Mursi following mass protests against his rule. Egypt has since seen a spate of deadly attacks mainly in Sinai, a hotbed of militant activity.

Most attacks, targeting security forces and the country’s Christian minority, were claimed by a local affiliate of Daesh.

In February, the army started a large operation against extremists in Sinai and the Western Desert bordering troubled Libya.

Portraying himself as a moderate Muslim, Al Sissi has repeatedly urged Muslim scholars to reform religious teachings in order to help fight violent militancy.

He always peppers his public addresses with quotes from the Quran.

While fighting terrorism, Al Sissi has been keen to heal the Egyptian economy battered by the unrest, which followed the 2011 uprising that forced president Hosni Mubarak out of power, and Mursi’s incompetent and divisive management of the country.

Al Sissi has launched a series of major development projects nationwide, including an expansion of the Suez Canal, a key waterway. He espouses an ambitious economic reform programme that has secured Egypt a badly needed loan of $12 billion from the International Monetary Fund.

Critics, however, say the reforms have exacted a high price from ordinary Egyptians, who have yet to recover from the 2016 float of the local pound and cuts in state subsidies. The measures have hiked prices of different goods and services in Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous country, with nearly 95 million inhabitants.

On several occasions, Al Sissi has thanked his compatriots for their “understanding of and patience over these reforms”. He has said the measures were necessary and overdue.

As president, Al Sissi is credited with re-establishing security in Egypt. His backers see him as a guarantee of stability amid regional turbulence.

But, rights advocates accuse him of showing little tolerance of political dissent and muzzling freedom of expression

Al Sissi, 63, has repeatedly advocated his view of human rights. “Don’t limit human rights to political rights,” he told reporters last year while visiting France. “Why don’t you ask me about the rights to good education and good health care? We don’t have good education and good health care? Why don’t you ask me about the right to good housing?”

Over the past four years, thousands of slum dwellers in Egypt have been relocated to new, modern communities as part of an ambitious plan to eliminate shanty towns in the country.

Al Sissi is the latest in a line of Egypt’s rulers drawn from the army.

Born in November 1954, he graduated from the military academy in 1977. He was unknown to ordinary Egyptians until August 2012 when Mursi picked him to be defence minister, replacing Hussain Tantawi, a veteran confidant of former president Hosni Mubarak. Al Sissi was the chief of the military intelligence service at the time. He had earlier served as a military attaché in Saudi Arabia.

After toppling Mursi, he generated a cult-like status unknown in Egypt since the era of the late president Jamal Abdul Nasser, an icon of Arab nationalism who died in 1970. This popularity is believed to have suffered recently due to harsh economic reforms.

Al Sissi is married with four children.