Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya

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The correct title of this article is al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.

al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya (Arabic: الجماعه الإسلاميه ) (Arabic for "the Islamic Group"; also transliterated Gamaat Islamiya, Jamaat al Islamiya, al-Jamā'ah al-Islāmiyah etc.) is a militant Egyptian Islamist movement that is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, European Union [1]and Egyptian governments. The group is dedicated to the overthrow of the Egyptian government and replacing it with an Islamic state.

The cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman is the spiritual leader of the movement. He was accused of conspiring to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993 but was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for his espousal of a subsequent conspiracy to bomb New York landmarks, including the United Nations and FBI offices. The Islamic Group has publicly threatened to retaliate against the United States unless Rahman is released from prison. However, the group has recently renounced violence and their leaders and members were released from prison in Egypt.

1 History
- 1.1 Assassination of president Anwar Sadat in 1981
2 Attacks
3 The disputed 2006 alliance with al-Qaeda
4 Renouncing Violence
5 References and notes
6 External links

[edit] History

Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya began as an umbrella organization for militant student groups, formed, like the Islamic Jihad, after the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood renounced violence in the 1970s.

In its early days, the group was primarily active on university campuses, and was mainly composed of university students. In addition, Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya recruited some inmates of Egyptian jails. Its membership has since become poorer, younger, and less well educated; its main base of recruiting and support has moved away from universities to poor neighborhoods of cities, and to rural areas.

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, who are an important part of the Egyptian economy, and thus of the livelihoods of the people on whom the group depends upon for support. The group may have been indirectly implicated in a failed attempt on president Hosni Mubarak.

The 1991 murder 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. That, in turn, caused a major government crackdown, and the further radicalization of the group.

Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya militants carried out the November 17, 1997 attack at the Temple of Hatshepsut (Deir el-Bahri) in Luxor, in which a band of six men machine-gunned and hacked to death with knives 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptians. Altogether 71 people were killed. The attack stunned Egyptian society, ruined the tourist industry for a number of years, and consequently sapped a large segment of popular support for violent Islamism in Egypt.

Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya renounced bloodshed in 1998 after causing about 1300 deaths. In September 2003 Egypt freed more than 1,000 members of the group because of the group's stated "commitment to rejecting violence," Interior Minister Habib el-Adli told Al-Jazeera.^[1]

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.

In April of 2006 the Egyptian government released another 900 members, including a founder, Najeh Ibrahim.

[edit] Assassination of president Anwar Sadat in 1981

Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya may have been indirectly involved in the assassination of president Anwar Sadat 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 those 900 militants, who were set free in April 2006 by the Egyptian government. [2]

[edit] Attacks

Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya was responsible for:

17 November 1997 – Luxor massacre at Deir el-Bahri, Luxor, Egypt. 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptians were killed.
28 April 1996 – Europa Hotel shooting, Cairo. 18 Greek tourists were killed.
19 November 1995 – Car bomb attack on the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. 16 people were killed.
20 October 1995 – Car bomb attack on police station in Rijeka, Croatia
26 June 1995 – attempt to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
8 June 1992 – assassination of Farag Foda.

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 and Luxor for several years, although they have long since resumed.

[edit] The disputed 2006 alliance with al-Qaeda

Deputy leader of al-Qaeda Ayman al-Zawahiri announced a new alliance with Al Gama'a al-Islamiyya, in a video released on the internet on 5 August of 2006^[1]. Zawahiri said "We bring good tidings to the Muslim nation about a big faction of the knights of the 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." A Gama'a leader, Muhammad al-Hukaymah, appeared in the video and confirmed the unity move^[2]. However, Hukaymah also said that some Gama'a members had "backslid" from the violent course he was keeping to, and some Gama'a representatives also denied that they were joining forces with the international al-Qaeda network^[3]. Sheikh Abdel Akher Hammad, a former Gama'a leader, told al-Jazeera: "If [some] brothers ... have joined, then this is their personal view and I don't think that most Gama'a Islamiyya members share that same opinion"^[4].

[edit] Renouncing Violence

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 Sadat, whom they assassinated, a martyr. In April of 2006, the Egyptian government released about 1200 of their leaders and members from prison.^[5]^[6]