Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak dealt harshly with jihadists returning from fighting in places like Afghanistan, Chechnya, and the Balkans.
According to the Associated Press, Egypt under current President Mohamed Morsi has become a hub for jihadist sentiment in Syria.
Egyptian militants are known to have been travelling to Syria to fight alongside Sunni rebels for more than year — but their movements were done quietly. But in recent days, a string of clerics have called for jihad in Syria, with some calling for volunteers to go fight against President Bashar Assad's regime.
Morsi has not publicly condoned jihad in Syria. He has decried Bashar al-Assad’s regime and announced Egypt is cutting ties with his government in Damascus.
The new tone in Egypt risks fueling the flow of Egyptian jihadi fighters to Syria, where the conflict is already increasingly defined by the sectarian divide, with the mostly Sunni rebels fighting a regime rooted in the minority Alawite sect, an off-shoot of Shiite Islam, and backed by Shiite Iran and Hezbollah.