Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya
Encyclopedia
- For the Southeast Asian organization of the same name, see Jemaah IslamiyahJemaah IslamiyahJemaah Islamiah , is a Southeast Asian militant Islamic organization dedicated to the establishment of a Daulah Islamiyah in Southeast Asia incorporating Indonesia, Malaysia, the southern Philippines, Singapore and Brunei...
.
Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya (Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
for "the Islamic Group"; also transliterated El Gama'a El Islamiyya. Also called "Islamic Groups" and transliterated Gamaat Islamiya, al Jamaat al Islamiya) is an Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
ian Islamist movement, and is considered a terrorist
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
organization by the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
and Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
ian governments. The group is (or was) dedicated to the overthrow of the Egyptian government and replacing it with an Islamic state
Islamic republic
Islamic republic is the name given to several states in the Muslim world including the Islamic Republics of Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, and Mauritania. Pakistan adopted the title under the constitution of 1956. Mauritania adopted it on 28 November 1958. Iran adopted it after the 1979 Iranian...
.
The group(s) is said to have constituted "the Islamicist movement's only genuine mass organizations" in Egypt. The group is reported to be responsible for the killing of hundreds of Egyptian policemen and soldiers, civilians, and dozens of tourists in a violent campaign in the 1990s. While the assassination of the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat
Anwar Sadat
Muhammad Anwar al-Sadat was the third President of Egypt, serving from 15 October 1970 until his assassination by fundamentalist army officers on 6 October 1981...
in 1981 is generally thought to have been carried out by another Islamist group, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, some have suggested al-Gamaa was responsible for or at least related to the assassination. In 2003 the imprisoned leadership of the group renounced bloodshed, and a series of high-ranking members have since been released by Egyptian authorities, and the group has been allowed to resume semi-legal peaceful activities. The now imprisoned cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman
Omar Abdel-Rahman
Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman , commonly known in the United States as "The Blind Sheikh", is a blind Egyptian Muslim leader who is currently serving a life sentence at the Butner Medical Center which is part of the Butner Federal Correctional Institution in Butner, North Carolina, United...
was a spiritual leader of the movement.
Origins in universities
Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya began as an umbrella organization for Egyptian militantMilitant
The word militant, which is both an adjective and a noun, usually is used to mean vigorously active, combative and aggressive, especially in support of a cause, as in 'militant reformers'. It comes from the 15th century Latin "militare" meaning "to serve as a soldier"...
student groups, formed, like the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, after the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood
Muslim Brotherhood
The Society of the Muslim Brothers is the world's oldest and one of the largest Islamist parties, and is the largest political opposition organization in many Arab states. It was founded in 1928 in Egypt by the Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna and by the late 1940s had an...
renounced violence in the 1970s.
In its early days, the group was primarily active on university campuses, and was mainly composed of university students. Originally they were a minority in the Egyptian student movement which was dominated by leftist Nasserists and Marxists. The leftists were strongly critical of the new Sadat government, and urged Egypt to fight a war of revenge against Israel, while President Sadat wanted to wait and rebuild the military. However, with some "discrete, tactical collaboration" with the government, who sought a "useful counterweight" to its leftist opponents, the group(s) began to grow in influence in 1973.
The Gama'at spread quite rapidly on campuses and won up to one-third of all student union elections. These victories provided a platform from which the associations campaigned for Islamic dress, the veiling of women, and the segregation
Sex segregation
Sex segregation is the separation of people according to their sex.The term gender apartheid also has been applied to segregation of people by gender, implying that it is sexual discrimination...
of classes by gender. Secular university administrators opposed these goals.
By march 1976 they were "dominant force" in the student movement and by 1977 "they were in complete control of the universities and had driven the left organizations underground."
Expansion
Having once been favored by the Egyptian government of Anwar SadatAnwar Sadat
Muhammad Anwar al-Sadat was the third President of Egypt, serving from 15 October 1970 until his assassination by fundamentalist army officers on 6 October 1981...
they now threatened it, passionately opposing what they believed was a "shameful peace with the Jews," aka the Camp David Accords
Camp David Accords
The Camp David Accords were signed by Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin on September 17, 1978, following thirteen days of secret negotiations at Camp David. The two framework agreements were signed at the White House, and were witnessed by United States...
with Israel. By 1979 they began to be harassed by the government but their numbers grew steadily. In 1979 Sadat sought to diminish the influence of the associations through a law that transferred most of the authority of the student unions to professors and administrators. During the 1980s, however, Islamists gradually penetrated college faculties. At Asyut University, which was the scene of some of the most intense clashes between Islamists and their opponents (including security forces, secularists, and Copts), the president and other top administrators — who were Islamists — supported Gama'at demands to end mixed-sex classes and to reduce total female enrollment. In other universities Gama'at also forbade the mixing of genders, films, concerts, and dances, and enforced their bans with clubs and iron bars. From the universities the groups reached out to make new recruits, preaching in poor neighbourhoods of cities, and to rural areas. and after a crackdown against them, inmates of Egyptian jails.
In April 1981 the group became involved in what was probably started as a clan feud/vendetta about livestock or property lines between Coptic and Muslim Egyptians in the vicinity of Minya, Egypt
Minya, Egypt
Minya is the capital of Minya Governorate in Upper Egypt. It is located approximately south of Cairo on the western bank of the Nile River, which flows north through the city...
. The group believed in the position of tributary or dhimmi
Dhimmi
A , is a non-Muslim subject of a state governed in accordance with sharia law. Linguistically, the word means "one whose responsibility has been taken". This has to be understood in the context of the definition of state in Islam...
for Christians in Egypt and opposed any signs of Coptic "arrogance" (istikbar), such as Christian cultural identity and opposition to an Islamic state. The group distributed a leaflet accusing Egypt's one Christian provincial governor (appointed by the government) of providing automatic weapons to Christians to attack Muslims, and the Sadat administration of following orders given by the United States.
Crackdown
In June 1981, a brutal sectarian Muslim-Copt fight broke out in the poor al-Zawaiyya Al Hamra district of CairoCairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
. "Men and women were slaughtered; babies thrown from windows, their bodies crushed on the pavement below; there was looting, killing and arson." Islamic Group(s) were accused of participating in the incident and in September 1981, one month before the assassination of Sadat, the Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya were dissolved by the state (although they had never been legally registered in the first place), their infrastructure was destroyed and their leaders arrested."
Assassination of president Anwar Sadat in 1981
Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya may have been indirectly involved in the assassination of president Anwar SadatAnwar Sadat
Muhammad Anwar al-Sadat was the third President of Egypt, serving from 15 October 1970 until his assassination by fundamentalist army officers on 6 October 1981...
in 1981. Karam Zuhdi, group leader of Al-Jamaa Islamiya, expressed regret for conspiring with Egyptian Islamic Jihad in the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. He was among the 900 militants who were set free in April 2006 by the Egyptian government.
Omar Abdel-Rahman
The cleric Omar Abdel-RahmanOmar Abdel-Rahman
Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman , commonly known in the United States as "The Blind Sheikh", is a blind Egyptian Muslim leader who is currently serving a life sentence at the Butner Medical Center which is part of the Butner Federal Correctional Institution in Butner, North Carolina, United...
is the spiritual leader of the movement. He was accused of participating in the World Trade Center 1993 bombings conspiracy, and was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for his espousal of a subsequent conspiracy to bomb New York City landmarks
New York City landmark bomb plot
The New York City landmark bomb plot was a planned follow-up to the February 1993 World Trade Center bombing designed to inflict mass casualties on American soil by attacking well known landmark targets throughout New York City in the United States. If the attack had been successful, it is likely...
, including the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
and FBI offices. The Islamic Group has publicly threatened to retaliate against the United States unless Rahman is released from prison. However, the group later renounced violence and their leaders and members were released from prison in Egypt.
1990s terrorism campaign
While the Islamic group had originally been an amorphous movement of local groups centered in mosqueMosque
A mosque is a place of worship for followers of Islam. The word is likely to have entered the English language through French , from Portuguese , from Spanish , and from Berber , ultimately originating in — . The Arabic word masjid literally means a place of prostration...
s without offices or membership roll, by the late 1980s it became more organized and "even adopted an official logo: an upright sword standing on an open Qur'an with an orange sun rising in the background," encircled by the Qur'an
Qur'an
The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...
ic verse that Abdel Rahman had quoted at his trials while trying to explain jihad
Jihad
Jihad , an Islamic term, is a religious duty of Muslims. In Arabic, the word jihād translates as a noun meaning "struggle". Jihad appears 41 times in the Quran and frequently in the idiomatic expression "striving in the way of God ". A person engaged in jihad is called a mujahid; the plural is...
to the judges:
وَقَاتِلُوهُمْ حَتَّى لاَ تَكُونَ فِتْنَةٌ وَيَكُونَ الدِّينُ لِلّهِ فَإِنِ انتَهَواْ فَلاَ عُدْوَانَ إِلاَّ عَلَى الظَّالِمِينَ
Fight them on until there is no more Tumult, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah; but if they cease, Let there be no hostility except to those who practise oppression.
This became the official motto of the group.
The 1990s saw Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya engage in an extended campaign of violence, from the murders and attempted murders of prominent writers and intellectuals, to the repeated targeting of tourists and foreigners. Serious damage was done to the largest sector of Egypt's economy -- tourism -- and in turn to the government, but it also devastated the livelihoods of many of the people on whom the group depends for support.
Victims of campaign against the Egyptian state from 1992-1997 totaled more than 1200 and included the head of the counter-terrorism police (Major General Raouf Khayrat), a speaker of parliament (Rifaat al-Mahgoub), dozens of European tourists and Egyptian bystanders, and over 100 Egyptian police.
The 1991 killing of the group's leader, Ala Mohieddin, presumably by security forces, led Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya to murder Egypt's speaker of parliament in retaliation. In June 1995, working together with Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the group staged a carefully planned attempt on the life of president Mubarak, led by Mustafa Hamza, a senior Egyptian member of the Al-Qaeda and commander of the military branch of the Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya. Mubarak escaped unharmed and retaliated with a massive and ruthless crackdown on GI members and their families in Egypt.
Taalat Fouad Qassem
Taalat Fouad Qassem
A member of al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, Taalat Fouad Qassem was arrested in Zagreb, Croatia.He was arrested by Croatian forces on September 13, 1995, after being sentenced to death in absentia by an Egyptian court in connection to the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and handed over to...
was arrested in Croatia in 1995.
Nonviolence Initiative
By 1997 the movement had become paralyzed. 20,000 Islamists were in custody in Egypt and thousands more had been cut down by the security forces. In July of that year, Islamist lawyer Montassir al-Zayyat brokered a deal between the Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya and the Egyptian government, called the Nonviolence Initiative, whereby the movement formally renounced violence. The next year the government released 2,000 members of the Islamic Group. After the initiative was declared Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman also gave his approval from his prison cell in the United States, though he later withdrew it.The initiative divided the Islamic Group between members in Egypt who supported it and those in exile who wanted the attacks to continue. Leading the opposition was EIJ leader Ayman Zawahiri who termed it "surrender" in angry letters to the London newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat.
Temple of Hatshepsut attack
Zawahiri enlisted Mustafa Hamza, the new emir of Islamic Groups and its military leader, Rifai Ahmed Taha, both exiles in Afghanistan with him, to sabotage the initiative with a massive terrorism attack that would provoke the government into repression. So on November 17, 1997 Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya killing campaign climaxed with the attack at the Temple of HatshepsutHatshepsut
Hatshepsut also Hatchepsut; meaning Foremost of Noble Ladies;1508–1458 BC) was the fifth pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty of Ancient Egypt...
(Deir el-Bahri
Deir el-Bahri
Deir el-Bahari or Deir el-Bahri is a complex of mortuary temples and tombs located on the west bank of the Nile, opposite the city of Luxor, Egypt....
) in Luxor
Luxor
Luxor is a city in Upper Egypt and the capital of Luxor Governorate. The population numbers 487,896 , with an area of approximately . As the site of the Ancient Egyptian city of Thebes, Luxor has frequently been characterized as the "world's greatest open air museum", as the ruins of the temple...
, in which a band of six men dressed in police uniforms machine-gunned and hacked to death with knives 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptians
Egyptians
Egyptians are nation an ethnic group made up of Mediterranean North Africans, the indigenous people of Egypt.Egyptian identity is closely tied to geography. The population of Egypt is concentrated in the lower Nile Valley, the small strip of cultivable land stretching from the First Cataract to...
. "The killing went on for 45 minutes, until the floors streamed with blood. The dead included a five-year-old British child and four Japanese couples on their honeymoons." Altogether 71 people were killed. The attack stunned Egyptian society, devastated the tourist industry for a number of years, and consequently sapped a large segment of popular support for violent Islamism in Egypt.
The revulsion of Egyptians and rejection of jihadi terrorism was so complete, the attack's supporters backpedaled. The day after the attack, Rifai Taha claimed the attackers intended only to take the tourists hostage, despite the evidence of the systematic nature of the slaughter. Others denied Islamist involvement completely. Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman
Omar Abdel-Rahman
Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman , commonly known in the United States as "The Blind Sheikh", is a blind Egyptian Muslim leader who is currently serving a life sentence at the Butner Medical Center which is part of the Butner Federal Correctional Institution in Butner, North Carolina, United...
blamed Israelis for the killings, and Zawahiri maintaining the Egyptian police had done it.
When Rifai Taha signed the al-Qaeda fatwa "International Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders" to kill Crusaders and Jews on behalf of the Islamic Group, he was "forced to withdraw his name" from the fatwa, lamely explaining to fellow members ... than he had "only been asked over the telephone to join in a statement of support for the Iraqi people."
Attacks
Major attacks by Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya:- 8 June 1992 – assassination of Farag FodaFarag FodaFarag Foda , also Faraj Fawda, was an important Egyptian thinker, human rights activist, writer, and columnist.Based in Cairo, he was noted for his critical articles and sharp satires about Islamic fundamentalism in Egypt. In many newspaper articles, he demonstrated weak points in Islamic ideology...
. - 26 June 1995 – attempt to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni MubarakHosni MubarakMuhammad Hosni Sayyid Mubarak is a former Egyptian politician and military commander. He served as the fourth President of Egypt from 1981 to 2011....
in Addis AbabaAddis AbabaAddis Ababa is the capital city of Ethiopia...
, EthiopiaEthiopiaEthiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...
. - 20 October 1995 – Car bomb attackRijeka terror attackThe 1995 Rijeka bombing occurred on October 20, 1995 in Rijeka, Croatia, when an Islamic terrorist organization attempted to destroy a police station by driving a car with a bomb into the wall of the building...
on police station in RijekaRijekaRijeka is the principal seaport and the third largest city in Croatia . It is located on Kvarner Bay, an inlet of the Adriatic Sea and has a population of 128,735 inhabitants...
, CroatiaCroatiaCroatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ... - 28 April 1996 – Europa Hotel shooting, CairoCairoCairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
. killing of 18 GreekGreeceGreece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
tourists mistaken for Jews. - 17 November 1997 – Luxor massacreNovember 1997 Luxor massacreThe Luxor Massacre refers to the killing of 62 people, mostly tourists, that took place on 17 November 1997, at Deir el-Bahri, an archaeological site and major tourist attraction located across the River Nile from Luxor in Egypt....
at Deir el-BahriDeir el-BahriDeir el-Bahari or Deir el-Bahri is a complex of mortuary temples and tombs located on the west bank of the Nile, opposite the city of Luxor, Egypt....
, LuxorLuxorLuxor is a city in Upper Egypt and the capital of Luxor Governorate. The population numbers 487,896 , with an area of approximately . As the site of the Ancient Egyptian city of Thebes, Luxor has frequently been characterized as the "world's greatest open air museum", as the ruins of the temple...
, EgyptEgyptEgypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
. 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptians killed.
It was also responsible for a spate of tourist shootings (trains and cruise ships sprayed with bullets) in middle and upper Egypt during the early 1990s. As a result of those attacks, cruise ships ceased sailing between Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
and Luxor
Luxor
Luxor is a city in Upper Egypt and the capital of Luxor Governorate. The population numbers 487,896 , with an area of approximately . As the site of the Ancient Egyptian city of Thebes, Luxor has frequently been characterized as the "world's greatest open air museum", as the ruins of the temple...
.
Renouncing terror
After spending more than two decades in prison and after intense debates and discussions with Al-Azhar scholars, most of the leaders of Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya have written several books renouncing their ideology of violence and some of them went as far as calling ex-Egyptian president SadatSadat
- See also :* Anwar Sadat, former President of Egypt* Sadat * Saadat* Sadat. Term also used for the descendents of Holy Prophet Muhammad through Imam Ali and Bibi Fatima progeny....
, whom they assassinated, a martyr.
Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya renounced bloodshed in 2003, and in September 2003 Egypt freed more than 1,000 members, citing what Interior Minister Habib el-Adli called the group's stated "commitment to rejecting violence."
Harsh repressive measures by the Egyptian government and the unpopularity of the killing of foreign tourists have reduced the group's profile in recent years but the movement retains popular support among Egyptian Islamists who disapprove of the secular nature of Egypt's society and peace treaty with Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
.
In April 2006 the Egyptian government released approximately 1200 members, including a founder, Najeh Ibrahim, from prison.
Reportedly, there have been "only two instances where members showed signs of returning to their former violent ways, and in both cases they were betrayed by informers in their own group."
2011 Revolution
Following the 2011 Revolution, Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya is working to establish a political party, the Building and Development Party. In August 2011, it presented 6,700 proxies (signatures) to the Egyptian political parties' committee on behalf of its party. In a statement the Gamaa said that any legislation drafted in Egypt after the revolution must refer to the shariaSharia
Sharia law, is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia is derived from two primary sources of Islamic law: the precepts set forth in the Quran, and the example set by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the Sunnah. Fiqh jurisprudence interprets and extends the application of sharia to...
of God, “who blessed us with this revolution. We believe that the suffering we endured during the past years was due to neglecting religion and putting those who don't fear [God] in power.” It also stated that "Islam can contain everyone and respects the freedom of followers of other religions to refer to their own sharia in private affairs."
Beliefs
One scholar studying the group (Gilles KepelGilles Kepel
Gilles Kepel is a French political scientist, specialist of the Islam and contemporary Arab world. He is Professor at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris and member of the Institut Universitaire de France....
) found a the group repeatedly used the name of radical Islamist theorist Sayyid Qutb
Sayyid Qutb
Sayyid Qutb was an Egyptian author, educator, Islamist theorist, poet, and the leading member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s and '60s....
, and often quoted from his manifesto, Ma'alim fi al-Tariq (Milestones), in their leaflets and newsletters. They emphasized the right to legislate belongs to God alone; and that divine unity (tawhid
Tawhid
Tawhid is the concept of monotheism in Islam. It is the religion's most fundamental concept and holds God is one and unique ....
) in Islam signifies liberation (tahrir) from all that is corrupt in thought -- including the liberation of all that is inherited or conventional, like customs and traditions.
There was a scant supply of any writing by the groups members, but some issues leading writer(s) of the gama'at thought worth mentioning included:
- Youth must be taught that Islam was nizam kamil wa shamil (a complete and perfect system) and must regulate government and war, the judicial system and the economy.
- Egypt's disastrous 1967 War was the result of following Arab nationalismArab nationalismArab nationalism is a nationalist ideology celebrating the glories of Arab civilization, the language and literature of the Arabs, calling for rejuvenation and political union in the Arab world...
rather than Islam. - Signs of the growth of an Islamic movement were the wearing of the veil by women and the white gallabieh and untrimmed beard by men, early marriage, and attendance at public prayers on the major Muslim festivals, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-adha.
While secularist social analyses of Egypt's socioeconomic problems maintained that poverty was caused by overpopulation or high defense expenditures, Al-Gama'at saw the cause in the populace's spiritual failures -- laxness, secularism, and corruption. The solution was a return to the simplicity, hard work, and self-reliance of earlier Muslim life.
Members allegedly allying with al-Qaeda
Deputy leader of al-Qaeda Ayman al-ZawahiriAyman al-Zawahiri
Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri is an Egyptian physician, Islamic theologian and current leader of al-Qaeda. He was previously the second and last "emir" of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, having succeeded Abbud al-Zumar in the latter role when Egyptian authorities sentenced al-Zumar to life...
announced a new alliance with a faction of Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya. In a video released on the internet on 5 August 2006. Zawahiri said "We bring good tidings to the Muslim nation about a big faction of the knights of Al-Gama'a Islamiyya uniting with Al-Qaeda," and the move aimed to help "rally the Muslim nation's capabilities in a unified rank in the face of the most severe crusader campaign against Islam in its history." An Al-Gama'a leader, Muhammad al-Hukaymah, appeared in the video and confirmed the unity move. However, Hukaymah acknowledged that other Al-Gama'a members had "backslid" from the militant course he was keeping to, and some Al-Gama'a representatives also denied that they were joining forces with the international Al-Qaeda network. Sheikh Abdel Akhar Hammad, a former Al-Gama'a leader, told Al-Jazeera: "If [some] brothers have joined, then this is their own personal view and I don't think that most Al-Gama'a members share that same opinion".
External links
- Al-Ghuroba (Followers of Ahlus Sunnah wal Jama'ah)
- Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya (Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International StudiesMonterey Institute of International StudiesThe Monterey Institute of International Studies is a graduate school of Middlebury College, located in Monterey, California, United States...
) - Article about Islamist resistance in Egypt
- Article in the Economist about more recent developments
- al-Gama'a al Islam home page
- Egypt's Jihad Group leader wants end to violence
- Violence won't work: how author of 'jihadists' bible' stirred up a storm
- The Rebellion Within a New Yorker article about terrorists renouncing violence, with significant attention paid to the Islamic Group