Posted on 12/22/2006 8:09:36 AM PST by Valin
Introduction
The Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya organization, which perpetrated terror attacks in Egypt throughout the 1980s and '90s, has in recent years undergone an ideological reversal exceptional among Islamist organizations. The leaders of the organization have undertaken to forsake violence and have apologized for past attacks and now promote a new ideology of coexistence with the regime. In addition, they have gone to great lengths to argue against Al-Qaeda's ideology and to restrict its influence on Muslims.
The Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya leadership's ideological reversal is an outstanding example of a collective shift away from violence by leaders of a prominent radical Islamist organization. This paper has been an attempt to detail the chronological and ideological development of this reversal, to map the changes in the group's thought, and to explain the reasons for this change. The story of Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya has an importance that extends well beyond Egypt, as it provides insight into the ideological structure of radical Islamism on the whole and the potential found in Islam itself to defuse the Islamist trend.
This paper reviews Al-Gama'a's cessation of violence and its aftermath as reflected in the Arab media.
* Y. Carmon is the president of MEMRI; Y. Feldner is the director of the MEMRI TV project; and D. Lav is a research fellow at MEMRI.
I. Historical Background The Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya organization was founded in the 1970s at Asyut University in Egypt. Its founders sought to create a religious organizational framework apart from the Muslim Brotherhood, because, as the organization's founders said, the Muslim Brotherhood was too liberal on religious matters, worshiped its founder Hassan Al-Bana, and was too interested in swelling its ranks and thus recruited new members indiscriminately. [1]
At first, Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya and other Islamic groups active in southern Egypt received government encouragement. At that time, then-president Anwar Sadat was trying to hobble the country's communists by means of the Islamists. "University administrators tried to absorb us, not clash with us," related an Al-Gama'a leader, Hamdi 'Abd Al-Rahman. "They protected [Al-Gama'a's] camps, and spent money on them." [2]
*Sadat's Assassination In 1980, Sheikh Omar 'Abd Al-Rahman joined Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya's Shura Council. Karam Zuhdi, the current Shura Council head, brought him in because he saw a need for "a mature cleric to take religious rulings into his hands and to give jurisprudent weight to the things that we, the younger ones, are to carry out." [3]
During that period, clashes between Egyptian security forces and Islamic movements in the universities increased and, fearing harsh repression along the lines of Nasser's repression of the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Gama'a leaders decided that "a need had arisen for a military force for us to defend ourselves." [4] The Jihad organization, led by Muhammad 'Abd Al-Salam Farag, [5] proposed itself. In a 1980 meeting, Zuhdi and Farag merged the two organizations. The new organization's Shura Council members moved from Asyut to Al-Fayoum, where they swore allegiance to Sheikh Omar, who was appointed the organization's Emir, that is, head of the organization. [6]
On October 6, 1981, while reviewing a military parade, President Anwar Sadat was assassinated by Khaled Al-Islambouli, 'Atta Tawil, Hussein 'Abbas, and 'Abd Al-Hamid 'Abd Al-Salam. Al-Islambouli, the leader, was from the ranks of Al-Gama'a and he came up with the idea when he knew that his unit had been nominated by military authorities to march in the parade. Leader Hamdi 'Abd Al-Rahman said that although he had known about the assassination plan, he had not known to whom Al-Islambouli would present it, and didn't believe that it could succeed. [7]
Two days later, on October 8, 1981, Al-Gama'a members attacked the Security Administration in Asyut in an attempt to take over the city. The attempt failed, dozens of organization members and state security personnel were killed, and the Al-Gama'a leaders were arrested.
*The Schism Over the "Blind Sheikh's" Authority With their leaders behind bars, Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya and the Jihad organization went their separate ways because of disagreement on various matters. The disagreement focused on the Jihad members' objections to the Asyut massacre; to calm matters, Sheikh Omar ordered the Al-Gama'a members who had participated in the attack to fast for two months in atonement. But it later transpired that focus of disagreement became Sheikh Omar himself. A group of Jihad members led by 'Issam Al-Qamari [8] argued that Sheikh Omar could not be in his position of authority because he was blind. The Sheikh's detractors, who learned that he had been appointed Emir while they were in prison, claimed that the religious law of the Supreme Imam states that a leader of such stature must have unimpaired senses so as to be capable of planning military and other operations. But Al-Gama'a members were unwavering in their support for Sheikh Omar, and the rift festered until the two organizations split in 1983. [9]
*The 1980s: Exodus to Afghanistan Although the 1980s was a time of relative quiet in Egypt, during that time members of militant Islamic organizations were streaming into Afghanistan to join the Afghani Jihad against the Soviets. Many researchers claim that the Egyptian regime, glad to be rid of them, encouraged them to leave.
Al-Gama'a Emir for the Marsa Matruh district Nabil 'Abd Al-Rahman Tawfiq Al-'Adawi told how the Islamists came to a decision to go to Afghanistan: "The idea of [waging] jihad in Afghanistan came up while I was in prison, in 1983, with leaders and members of the Egyptian Islamist groups and movements. The government was detaining us regularly during that time. We would be cleared of one charge, and then arrested [and held in administrative detention] for three months [on another charge]. When we got out, we would be arrested again [and held] for six months. We got tired [of this], and said: There is no choice but to run the jihad movement from outside [Egypt]. The call (to jihad) must be global, not local… [that is,] jihad must be transformed from jihad against the rulers in the Arab countries to jihad against the international infidels ruling these Arab rulers. In the early 1980s, there were discussions among the leaders in the prisons, and it was decided to globalize the da'wa [proselytizing] and the movement… I was incarcerated together with [Muhammad Shawqi] Al-Islambouli in Court File No. 712… and we were cleared. Later we were arrested repeatedly, until we couldn't go out into the street." [10]
Peshawar in Pakistan was home base for the Al-Gama'a volunteers on their way to Afghanistan, and more and more of them arrived during the late 1980s. In 1987, three Al-Gama'a leaders, Muhammad Shawqi Al-Islambouli, 'Ali Abd Al-Fatah, and Rifa'i Taha, arrived in Peshawar, and a year later Sheikh Omar Abd Al-Rahman visited them there. [11]
Al-Gama'a established military bases in Afghanistan. In 1993, Tal'at Fuad Qasem, an Al-Gama'a leader, told journalist Hisham Mubarak: "The move to Afghanistan had several goals. First, to assure the organization's leaders that [they need not] fear being arrested or eliminated; second, to return them to Egypt after they had acquired military skills in battle and were capable of helping train their brothers." [12]
*The 1990s: Attacks Inspired by the members returning from waging jihad in Afghanistan and the Balkans, Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya reached the peak of its terror activity in the 1990s. On September 2, 1990, Al-Gama'a spokesman Dr. 'Alaa Muhyi Al-Din was killed by the Egyptian authorities; according to Al-Gama'a members, he was targeted in retaliation for the organization's failed attempt on the life of then-Egyptian interior minister Zaki Badr the previous year. Al-Gama'a members decided to strike back by assassinating Interior Minister 'Abd Al-Halim Moussa, but instead killed parliamentary chairman Rif'at Al-Mahgoub because of a mistake in identifying the convoy.
More violence came in 1992, following the murder of 12 Coptic Christians in the village of Sanbu in the Asyut District. In fact, the violence hardly let up during the entire decade, spreading to Cairo itself. In 1992, Al-Gama'a members assassinated liberal intellectual Farag Fodeh; in 1993, they tried to assassinate Information Minister Safwat Al-Sharif; in 1994, they tried to kill Nobel Prize laureateNaguib Mahfouz, and committed numerous other murders and attacks. In 1995, led by Mustafa Hamza, Al-Gama'a' went so far as to attempt to assassinate President Hosni Mubarak while he was on an official visit to Addis Ababa.
Throughout the 1990s, Al-Gama'a members returning from Afghanistan and the Balkans played a growing role in attacks. Asked whether Al-Gama'a was waging guerilla warfare against the Egyptian regime, Safwat 'Abd Al-Ghani, one of the leaders of Al-Gama'a's military wing, told journalist Nabil Sharaf Al-Din during his trial for his role in the assassination of parliamentary spokesman Rifa'at Al-Mahgoub: "Call it what you will. Guerilla warfare, street warfare, or simply warfare, this method has yielded good results in the war in Afghanistan against Communism." [13]
*Announcing the Conciliation Initiative On July 5, 1997, Al-Gama'a announced a unilateral initiative of conciliation with the Egyptian regime. During a court hearing, an Al-Gama'a member read aloud a communiqué, signed by six of the organization's leaders, that declared a halt to all armed operations within and outside Egypt, and a stop to incitement to commit attacks.
The initiative was received with suspicion in the media and in Egyptian government circles, and suspicion only increased when a few months later, in November 1997, Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya carried out its bloodiest attack of all at Luxor, killing 58 German and Japanese tourists and three Egyptians.
*The Luxor Attack
Then-head of Al-Gama'a's Shura Council, Rifa'i Taha, who opposed the conciliation initiative and who had been sentenced to death in absentia in 1992, claimed responsibility for the Luxor attack from Afghanistan, where he had been for years. Later, in 1998, he signed the Al-Qaeda fatwa that urged the killing of Americans, and in November 2001 he was extradited to Egypt from Syria, where he had gone from Sudan.
The Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya leaders were hard pressed to account for the Luxor attack after their declaration of a halt to the violence. Karam Zuhdi,Accused No. 3 in the Great Jihad Case of 1981, [14] said: "Only Allah knows, but apparently the operation at Luxor was carried out based on directives issued some years prior to the [peace] initiative, and [carried out] by a group of people who had fled to the hills and the rural areas and had not heard of the initiative… This deed [was like] stabbing a knife into our backs." [15]
The Luxor attack and the reports of the mutilation of the victims' bodies led to public repulsion at Al-Gama'a, and Al-Gama'a spokesman Osama Rushdie, a Netherlands resident and supporter of the conciliation initiative, announced his resignation.
*The Regime Changes its Stance
It was only four years later that the conciliation initiative gathered momentum, following the September 11, 2001 attacks in the U.S. At that time, the Egyptian regime decided to give broad media exposure to Al-Gama'a's ideological revolution. It is possible that this decision was sparked by fears on the part of the Egyptian authorities that the wave of sympathy for Al-Qaeda and bin Laden would bring Al-Gama'a back to terrorism. It is also possible that the Egyptian regime feared damage to its image in the international arena, along the lines of what happened with Saudi Arabia (because of the 15 Saudis involved in 9/11), as a result of the involvement of Egyptian citizens such as Muhammad 'Atta, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Abu Hafs, Saif Al-'Adel, and others. Whatever the reason, in October 2001, the Egyptian authorities permitted Al-Gama'a leaders to hold meetings in the Egyptian prisons in which they were incarcerated so as to advance the initiative among the organization's members. [16]
A few months later, four books written by Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya leaders were published, and were sold at the Cairo international book fair. The volumes, called the "Concept Correction Series," were published by Hamdi Abd Al-Rahman, the first Al-Gama'a leader to be released after the announcement of the initiative. He dealt with their publication with the approval of the Egyptian authorities.
Around the same time, the Al-Gama'a leadership decided to remove the movement handbooks from the 1980s from circulation and to replace them with the books used by the Muslim Brotherhood. [17]
Al-Gama'a's conciliation initiative again made headlines in June and July of 2002, following a series of articles by the editor of the Egyptian government weekly Al-Musawwar, Makram Muhammad Ahmad, former head of the Egyptian Journalists' Association and target of an assassination attempt by the Islamist terror group Those Saved from Hellfire.
The first article was an extensive interview with Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya leaders in prison. The following week, in the second article, Ahmad covered a meeting - facilitated by the Egyptian authorities - between the organization's imprisoned leaders and imprisoned members in one of Egypt's prisons. In the third article, Ahmad interviewed some of the organization's senior leaders who had been released from prison. However, an interview with the Jihad organization leader Aboud Al-Zumr in prison, which was supposed to be the fourth article, was cancelled without explanation.
*Conciliation, But Not Penitence
In their books and in the Al-Musawwar series, the Al-Gama'a leaders had an opportunity to set out the conceptual infrastructure underpinning the conciliation initiative. However, although they acknowledged that in the past their actions were misguided from the religious standpoint, and pointless from the practical standpoint, they refused to acknowledge that they were morally flawed. In the first of the interview series, Al-Gama'a Shura Council head Karam Zuhdi expressed his willingness to apologize to the Egyptian people and pay compensation to the victims' families, if he could get the money. But in the second article, the magazine corrected an error and said that Zuhdi had not expressed willingness to apologize for Al-Gama'a's "crimes," as written, but rather for its "deeds." [18]
Al-Gama'a leader Hamdi 'Abd Al-Rahman explained that he was opposed to the term "repentance" used regularly in the media with regard to Al-Gama'a's conciliation initiative because, as he said, "we are not thieves or highwaymen that we should repent." [19]
But the "defeatist" statements by the incarcerated leaders were too much to bear for the Al-Gama'a leaders abroad - even for those who had supported the original conciliation initiative. After Karam Zuhdi apologized for assassinating Sadat, Osama Rushdie, who, as previously mentioned, had resigned from the Gama'a leadership in protest of the Luxor attack, now said: "The conciliation initiative [was] completely different from what is being said now… [Some] elements in the organization are insisting on continuing this ceaseless self-flagellation, and making apologies and stating confessions of mistakes and all these stories." Rushdie added that if Karam Zuhdi really believed what he said, he should quit and make way for a new generation. [20] On another occasion, Rushdie said: "If the brothers apologize to the government, who will apologize to the hundreds of Al-Gama'a members killed and to those hanged on the gallows after fictitious trials?! Who will apologize to their mothers, their children, and their relatives?!" [21]
II. Major Changes in Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya's Ideology *Shari'a and the Law.........
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"Tourist Killings in Egypt, November 17, 1997: Al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya (IG) gunmen shot and killed 58 tourists and four Egyptians and wounded 26 others at the Hatshepsut Temple in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor. Thirty-four Swiss, eight Japanese, five Germans, four Britons, one French, one Colombian, a dual Bulgarian/British citizen, and four unidentified persons were among the dead. Twelve Swiss, two Japanese, two Germans, one French, and nine Egyptians were among the wounded." [from FreedomPoster profile page]
Whoops, meant to bump you, since I quoted you.
No problem. I forget what FReeper I scarfed that from. I'm always glad to know folks are using the resource.
Good to hear, because I used it in another topic a bit later. ;')
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