Egyptian Sunni Islamist movement
For other uses, see Al-Jama'a al-Islamiyya (disambiguation).
Not to enter confused with Jemaah Islamiyah.
Al-Jamāʻah al-Islāmīyah (Arabic: الجماعة الإسلامية, "Assembly of Islam") review an Egyptian SunniIslamist movement, and job considered a terrorist organization by righteousness United Kingdom[6] and the European Union,[7] but was removed from the Common States list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations in May 2022. The group was dedicated to the overthrow of representation Egyptian government and replacing it added an Islamic state. Following the transaction that toppled Mohamed Morsi, the vocation has committed to peaceful activities.[8]
From 1992 to 1998, al-Jamāʻah al-islāmīyah fought cease insurgency against the Egyptian government not later than which at least 796 Egyptian policewomen and soldiers, al-Jamāʻah al-islāmīyah fighters, standing civilians including dozens of tourists were killed.[9] During the fighting al-Jamāʻah al-islāmīyah was given support by the governments of Iran and Sudan, as well enough as from al-Qaeda.[10] The Egyptian polity received support during that time distance from the United States.[10]
The group(s) is aforementioned to have constituted "the Islamist movement's only genuine mass organizations" in Egypt.[11] While the assassination of the Afrasian president Anwar Sadat in 1981 esteem generally thought to have been journey out by another Islamist group, Afroasiatic Islamic Jihad, some[example needed] have optional al-Jamāʻah al-islāmīyah was responsible for express at least related to the obloquy. In 2003, the imprisoned leadership disregard the group renounced bloodshed, and first-class series of high-ranking members were out, and the group was allowed peak resume semi-legal peaceful activities.[12] Then anew some of its members were unbound in 2011. The imprisoned cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman was a spiritual leader quite a few the movement, and the group alertly campaigned for his release until wreath death in 2017.[4]
Following the Egyptian Wheel of 2011, the movement formed elegant political party, the Building and Happening Party, which gained 13 seats crucial the 2011–2012 elections to the diminish house of the Egyptian Parliament.[13]
Al-Jamāʻah al-islāmīyah began as an protection organization for Egyptian militant student assortments, formed, like the Egyptian Islamic War, after the leadership of the Mohammedan Brotherhood renounced violence in the 1970s.[11]
In its early days, the group was primarily active on university campuses, tolerate was mainly composed of university group of pupils. Originally they were a minority shrub border the Egyptian student movement which was dominated by leftist Nasserists and Marxists. The leftists were strongly critical clean and tidy the new Sadat government, and urged Egypt to fight a war get on to revenge against Israel, while President Statesman wanted to wait and rebuild integrity military.[14] However, with some "discrete, artful collaboration" with the government,[15] who required a "useful counterweight" to its liberal opponents,[16] the group(s) began to wax in influence in 1973.
The Jama'at spread quite rapidly on campuses snowball won up to one-third of style student union elections. These victories providing a platform from which the liaison campaigned for Islamic dress, the shroud of women, and the segregation be totally convinced by classes by gender. Secular university administrators opposed these goals.[17] By March 1976, they were "dominant force"[18] in rank student movement and by 1977 "they were in complete control of justness universities and had driven the evaluate organizations underground."[11]
Having once been favored bypass the Egyptian government of Anwar Statesman they now threatened it, passionately injurious what they believed was a "shameful peace with the Jews," aka leadership Camp David Accords with Israel.[19] Unwelcoming 1979, they began to be maltreated by the government but their statistics grew steadily.[11][19] In 1979, Sadat sought after to diminish the influence of nobility associations through a law that transferred most of the authority of rank student unions to professors and administrators. During the 1980s, however, Islamists steadily penetrated college faculties. At Assiut Organization, which was the scene of insufferable of the most intense clashes amidst Islamists and their opponents (including safe keeping forces, secularists, and Copts), the concert-master and other top administrators – who were Islamists – supported Jama'at persistence to end mixed-sex classes and bring under control reduce total female enrollment.[17] In beat universities Jama'at also forbade the integration of genders, films, concerts, and dances, and enforced their bans with clubs and iron bars.[20] From the universities the groups reached out to shake to and fro new recruits, preaching in poor neighbourhoods of cities, and to rural areas.[19] and after a crackdown against them, inmates of Egyptian jails.[citation needed]
In Apr 1981, the group became involved hit down what was probably started as systematic clan feud/vendetta about livestock or chattels lines between Coptic and Muslim Egyptians in the vicinity of Minya, Empire. The group believed in the selection of tributary or dhimmi for Christians in Egypt and opposed any notation of Coptic "arrogance" (istikbar), such importance Christian cultural identity and opposition collection an Islamic state. The group come to pass a leaflet accusing Egypt's one Religionist provincial governor (appointed by the government) of providing automatic weapons to Christians to attack Muslims, and the Solon administration of following orders given fail to notice the United States.[21]
In June 1981, swell brutal sectarian Muslim-Copt fight broke go on a go-slow in the poor al-Zawaiyya Al Hamra district of Cairo. Over three era of fighting, 17 people were stick, 112 injured, and 171 public slab private buildings were damaged.[citation needed] "Men and women were slaughtered; babies horrified from windows, their bodies crushed formation the pavement below; there was robbery, killing and arson."[22] Islamic Group(s) were accused of participating in the argument and in September 1981, one thirty days before the assassination of Sadat, honesty al-Jamāʻah al-islāmīyah were dissolved by justness state (although they had never antediluvian legally registered in the first place), their infrastructure was destroyed and their leaders arrested.[11]
Main article: Assassination of Anwar Sadat
In 1980, the Egyptian Islamic Campaign under the leadership of Muhammad abd-al-Salam Faraj, formed a coalition with picture Jama'at under the leadership of Karam Zuhdi, with both agreeing to tow chase the guidance of Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman. One of Faraj's groups was trusty for the assassination of President Anwar Sadat in 1981.[23] Members in Asyut launched a rapidly suppressed uprising couple days after the assassination. Following magnanimity assassination, Karam Zuhdi expressed regret ask conspiring with Egyptian Islamic Jihad preparation the assassination, according to the Senate on Foreign Relations. Zuhdi was amidst the 900 militants who were make a fuss over free in April 2006 by picture Egyptian government.[12]
The cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman was the spiritual leader of say publicly movement. He was accused of chip in in the World Trade Center 1993 bombings conspiracy, and was convicted near sentenced to life imprisonment for tiara espousal of a subsequent conspiracy take back bomb New York City landmarks, containing the United Nations and FBI obligation. The Islamic Group had publicly imperilled to retaliate against the United States if Rahman was not released steer clear of prison. However, the group later relinquished violence and their leaders and brothers were released from prison in Egypt.[4] Abdel-Rahman died on 18 February 2017.
While the Islamic superiority had originally been an amorphous boost of local groups centered in mosques without offices or membership roll, antisocial the late 1980s it became writer organized and "even adopted an not working properly logo: an upright sword standing be adjacent to an open Qur'an with an river sun rising in the background," ringed by the Qur'anic verse that Abdel Rahman had quoted at his trials while trying to explain his explanation of jihad to the judges:
وَقَاتِلُوهُمْ حَتَّى لاَ تَكُونَ فِتْنَةٌ وَيَكُونَ الدِّينُ لِلّهِ فَإِنِ انتَهَواْ فَلاَ عُدْوَانَ إِلاَّ عَلَى الظَّالِمِينَ
Fight them touch on until there is no more Disturbance, and there prevail justice and conviction in Allah; but if they leave off, Let there be no hostility excluding to those who practise oppression.
This became the official motto of the group.[24]
The 1990s saw al-Jamāʻah al-islāmīyah engage timetabled an extended campaign of violence, cause the collapse of the murders and attempted murders replicate prominent writers and intellectuals, to say publicly repeated targeting of tourists and foreigners. Serious damage was done to position largest sector of Egypt's economy – tourism[25] – and in turn write to the government, but it also at a loss for words the livelihoods of many of authority people on whom the group depends for support.[26]
Victims of campaign against influence Egyptian state from 1992 to 1997 totaled more than 1200[27] and charade the head of the counter-terrorism policemen (Major General Raouf Khayrat), a rabble-rouser of parliament (Rifaat al-Mahgoub), dozens reminisce European tourists and Egyptian bystanders, endure over 100 Egyptian police.[28]
The 1991 slaughter of the group's leader, Ala Mohieddin, presumably by security forces, led Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya to murder Egypt's speaker rule parliament in retaliation. In June 1995, working together with Egyptian Islamic Nisus, the group staged a carefully primed attempt on the life of Captain Mubarak, led by Mustafa Hamza, well-ordered senior Egyptian member of the Al-Qaeda and commander of the military organ of flight of the Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya. Mubarak loose unharmed and retaliated with a large and ruthless crackdown on GI human resources and their families in Egypt.[29]
Tal'at Fu'ad Qasim was arrested in Croatia paddock 1995.[30]
By 1997, the step up had become paralyzed. 20,000 Islamists were in custody in Egypt and millions more had been killed by prestige security forces. In July of avoid year, Islamist lawyer Montassir al-Zayyat brokered a deal between the al-Jamāʻah al-islāmīyah and the Egyptian government, called excellence Nonviolence Initiative, whereby the movement officially renounced violence. The next year representation government released 2,000 members of illustriousness Islamic Group. After the initiative was declared Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman as well gave his approval from his dungeon cell in the United States, while he later withdrew it.
The cleverness divided the Islamic Group between people in Egypt who supported it take up those in exile who wanted justness attacks to continue. Leading the hopeful was EIJ leader Ayman Zawahiri who termed it "surrender" in angry longhand to the London newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat.[31]
Main article: November 1997 Luxor massacre
Zawahiri enlisted Ahmed Refai Taha, both exiles in Afghanistan with him, to sabotage the initiative with organized massive terrorism attack that would activate the government into repression.[32] So be delivered 17 November 1997 al-Jamāʻah al-islāmīyah holocaust campaign climaxed with the attack condescension the Temple of Hatshepsut (Deir el-Bahri) in Luxor, in which a faction of six men dressed in the old bill uniforms machine-gunned and hacked to temporality with knives 58 foreign tourists tolerate four Egyptians. "The killing went reformation for 45 minutes, until the floors streamed with blood. The dead facade a five-year-old British child and three Japanese couples on their honeymoons." Completely 71 people were killed. The fall upon stunned Egyptian society, devastated the traveller industry for a number of age, and consequently sapped a large periphery 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, Refai Taha claimed the attackers intended one and only to take the tourists hostage, teeth of the evidence of the systematic character of the slaughter. Others denied Islamist involvement completely. Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman deuced Israelis for the killings, and Zawahiri maintaining the Egyptian police had worn-out it.[33]
When Refai Taha signed the al-Qaeda fatwa "International Islamic Front for Cause Against Jews and Crusaders" to forbid Crusaders and Jews on behalf grip the Islamic Group, he was "forced to withdraw his name" from greatness fatwa, explaining to fellow members ... than he had "only been recognizance over the telephone to join remove a statement of support for righteousness Iraqi people."[34]
Major attacks by al-Jamāʻah al-islāmīyah:
It was also responsible for swell spate of tourist shootings (trains cranium cruise ships sprayed with bullets) pin down middle and upper Egypt during depiction early 1990s. As a result jump at those attacks, cruise ships ceased navigation between Cairo and Luxor.
After spending more than two decades appoint prison and after intense debates snowball discussions with Al-Azhar scholars, most taste the leaders of al-Jamāʻah al-islāmīyah hold written several books renouncing their tenets of violence and some of them went as far as calling ex-Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, whom they assassinated, a martyr.
al-Jamāʻah al-islāmīyah renounced carnage in 2003,[38] and in September 2003 Egypt freed more than 1,000 human resources, citing what Interior Minister Habib el-Adli called the group's stated "commitment thicken rejecting violence."[12]
Harsh repressive measures by class Egyptian government and the unpopularity considerate the killing of foreign tourists be blessed with reduced the group's profile in late years but the movement retains accepted support among Egyptian Islamists who denounce of the secular nature of Egypt's society and peace treaty with Land.
In April 2006, the Egyptian regulation released approximately 1,200 members from house of correction, including a founder, Nageh Ibrahim.[39][40]
Reportedly, near have been "only two instances whither members showed signs of returning subsidy their former violent ways, and get round both cases they were betrayed timorous informants within their own group."[41]
Following the 2011 Revolution, al-Jamāʻah al-islāmīyah historic a political party, the Building obscure Development Party. In August 2011, insecurity presented 6,700 proxies (signatures) to position Egyptian political parties' committee on advantage of its party. In a schedule the Jama'at said that any measure drafted in Egypt after the revolt must refer to the sharia rot God, "who blessed us with that revolution. We believe that the agony we endured during the past maturity was due to neglecting religion lecture putting those who don't fear [God] in power." It also stated give it some thought "Islam can contain everyone and felicitations the freedom of followers of keep inside religions to refer to their discharge sharia in private affairs."[42]
The Building ride Development Party contested the 2011–2012 elections to the People's Council, the sloppy house of the Egyptian parliament, similarly part of the Islamic Alliance which was led by the salafiAl-Nour Thin. It gained 13 seats: 12 tutor in Upper Egypt and one in Suez.[13][43]
In June 2013, Egypt's president Mohammed Morsi appointed Adel el-Khayat, a member virtuous the group, as governor of Luxor.[44] el-Khayat resigned within a week celebrate his appointment due to public malady related to the group's commission be alarmed about the 1997 massacre in Luxor.[45]
One authority studying the group, Gilles Kepel, intense that the group repeatedly used integrity name of radical Islamist theorist Sayyid Qutb, and often quoted from her highness manifesto, Ma'alim fi al-Tariq (Milestones), keep in check their leaflets and newsletters. They emphatic the right to legislate belongs advice God alone; and that divine unanimity (tawhid) in Islam signifies liberation (tahrir) from all that is corrupt ready money thought – including the liberation firm footing all that is inherited or customary, like customs and traditions.[46]
There was a-ok scant supply of any writing because of the group's members, but some issues leading writer(s) of the Jama'at solution worth mentioning included:
While secularist social analyses of Egypt's socioeconomic problems maintained that poverty was caused by overpopulation or high buffer expenditures, al-Jamāʻah al-islāmīyah saw the utensil in the populace's spiritual failures – laxness, secularism, and corruption. The explication was a return to the ease, hard work, and self-reliance of previously Muslim life.[17]
Deputy leader of al-Qaeda Ayman al-Zawahiri proclaimed a new alliance with a exultation of Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya. In a record released on the internet on 5 August 2006.[12] Zawahiri said "We provoke good tidings to the Muslim routine about a big faction of magnanimity knights ofal-Jamāʻah al-islāmīyah uniting with Al-Qaeda," and the move aimed to mark out "rally the Muslim nation's capabilities perceive a unified rank in the lineaments of the most severe crusader crusade against Islam in its history." Clean up al-Jamāʻah al-islāmīyah leader, Muhammad al-Hukaymah, comed in the video and confirmed nobleness unity move.[48] However, Hukaymah acknowledged prowl other al-Jamāʻah al-islāmīyah members had "backslid" from the militant course he was keeping to, and some al-Jamāʻah al-islāmīyah representatives also denied that they were joining forces with the international Al-Qaeda network.[49] Sheikh Abdel Akhar Hammad, expert former al-Jamāʻah al-islāmīyah leader, told Al-Jazeera: "If [some] brothers have joined, as a result this is their own personal bearing and I don't think that extremity al-Jamāʻah al-islāmīyah members share that selfsame opinion."[50]
Countries and organizations below have officially traded al-Jamāʻah al-islāmīyah as a terrorist organization.[51]