| Africa North | ||||
| Al Qaeda Faction Alters Course | ||||
| 2007-11-21 | ||||
The leading al Qaeda faction -- once led by al Qaeda's number two man, Ayman al-Zawahri -- has altered its traditional course by publishing this series of critiques of the religious justifications long relied on in calling for followers to take up arms against ruling regimes and foreign powers. In the new "document", al-Jihad Group's founder and leading ideologue, Sayed Imam,
"This al-Jihad initiative is very important, it is directed mostly to the outside world and more explicitly to the leaders of al-Jihad Group and al Qaeda because the author of those reviews is Sayed Imamal-Sharief, the very same person whose former writings are the point of reference for the al-Jihad members," said Diaa Rashwan, an expert on Islamic groups at al-Ahram Center for Strategic Studies in Cairo. Imam was the first Amir, or leader, for the al-Jihad Group in 1968 and the first leader of an armed cell who ever decided to fight fellow Muslims. Imam also authored, "The Principle Book for Preparations", a reference book that al Qaeda uses to justify its operations and win new recruits on religious grounds.
But in the new review he now says his group "erred enormously from an Islamic point of view" by allowing "killing based on nationality, color of skin and hair or based on religious doctrine". "Those are actually the methods of secular revolutionaries and not the methods of Islam. There's no such a thing as the goal justifies the means in Islam, even when the goals are noble are legitimate. Muslims worship God by using legitimate methods too," he wrote. Imam contends that those who target innocent people are working outside the parameters of the Islamic Sharia, or law. "They place their own desires and will before that of Allah's," he argues in this new milestone study. Imam says the Islamic rules for war stipulate that if Muslims are not certain about the true nature and make-up of the enemy "then it's compulsory under the rules of Islam not to take up arms against them" for fear that innocent people might be included and harmed. The review calls for an end to targeting of "all civilians", and "tourists of all races". The al-Jihad Group and its offshoots have in the past targeted local police and military officers, foreign tourists and other Muslims who disagree with their philosophy. Imam says he was prompted to write the review after noticing persistent "violations" by members of the al-Jihad Group in its decades-long fight with authorities that has included excessive bloodshed, random killings and targeting of civilians. Al-Jihad Group has traditionally been the most militant of the Islamic groups, refusing for the past ten years to follow in the foot-steps of al-Gamaa al-Islamia (Islamci Group), another militant group that renounced violence ten years ago.
The documents that are being serialized simultaneously in a local newspaper and a Kuwait newspaper are also important because they are expected to rekindle a debate in the Muslim world that is likely to include academic scholars, religious scholars and political activists over the methods employed by some of the militant groups and the true meaning of armed Jihad in Islam. "A huge debate will happen after those documents are finished," said Kamal Habib, an independent expert on Islamic groups who was formerly a member of Islamic militant groups. A member of al-Gamaa al-Islamia, Essam Derbala, said the initiative was welcome news for all active Islamic groups, especially those who took up arms in the past, because it helps Muslim groups "work peacefully to strengthen their societies" against what he called Western "attempts to dissolve the Islamic nation" and against "the state of occupation we are experiencing" -- referring to the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Israeli occupation of Arab land. | ||||
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| Africa: North |
| A look at the man responsible for the Egyptian attacks |
| 2005-05-02 |
| Once the cheerful leader of a school singing group, Ehab Yousri Yassin underwent a drastic change a few years ago, mingling with Islamic extremists, talking only about religion and forcing his sisters to wear head-to-toe veils. Residents of this impoverished city on Cairo's northern outskirts provided insights into the 24-year-old's life Sunday, a day after security officials said he blew himself up while jumping from a bridge in central Cairo during a police chase. The explosion killed Yassin suspected of involvement in an April 7 suicide bombing in a crowded Cairo bazaar and injured seven others, including four foreigners. Less than two hours later, police claim, one of Yassin's sisters and his fiancee, enraged by his death, opened fire on a tourist bus carrying Austrians before killing themselves. The tourists escaped injury, but two Egyptians in the area were wounded. Police cracked down hard, arresting 200 people in massive security sweeps Saturday and Sunday in two areas just north of Cairo, including the neighborhood in Shubra el-Kheima where Yassin and his sisters grew up. Yassin's friends and relatives were held for questioning in Saturday's violence and suspected connections to local terror networks. Police played down the attacks as the work of amateurish militants, but political opposition groups and security experts blamed Egypt's controversial decades-old emergency laws, saying they created an oppressive environment that breeds violence and extremists like Yassin. Yassin grew up in the crowded streets of Ezbet al-Gabalawi, a Shubra el-Kheima district. People said he was a polite and happy leader of a school singing group before adopting hard-line Islamic views about four years ago. "He forced his sisters to wear the Islamic veil and had gone too far into Islamic extremism," said one of Yassin's friends, Tamer Sayyed. "Yassin started to quarrel with his father and criticize others for subjects they used to talk about, instead of speaking about Islam. That made his friends decide to distance themselves from him." Muna Rashad, a pharmacist who worked for 16 years close to the apartment building in which Yassin's family lived, said her initial surprise at hearing the news faded when she recalled how Yassin and his sisters had changed. "(Yassin) was good, smiling and behaved well when he used to come to buy medicine and talk to me, but he changed later when he used to mingle with Islamic fundamentalists coming to visit him from the other neighborhood," Rashad said. Asked why Yassin turned to extremism, Rashad blamed the death of his mother a few years ago and the city's poverty. "Poverty kills the brain," she added. Yassin and fugitives Ashraf Saeed Youssef, 27, and Gamal Ahmed Abdel Aal, 35, were sought for planning the April 7 suicide bombing that killed two French tourists and an American. Police said they captured Youssef and Abdel Aal on Saturday before chasing Yassin onto a highway overpass, where he jumped off, detonating the bomb that injured seven people, including an Israeli couple, a Swedish man and his Italian girlfriend. Some witnesses reported seeing a bomb or a bag being thrown from above before the explosion occurred. Soon after, police said Yassin's veil-wearing sister, Negat Yassin, and fiancee, Iman Ibrahim Khamis, shot at a bus carrying tourists near the historic Citadel site in retaliation for Yassin's death. Police and the government-guided Al-Ahram newspaper had said the bus was carrying Israeli tourists, but Austrian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Silvia Neureiter confirmed Sunday that 44 Austrians were on board. Yassin's sister then shot and fatally wounded her companion before killing herself, police said. At the shooting scene, bystanders said police killed at least one of the armed women, conflicting with accounts they committed suicide. Many were shocked by the involvement of women, who are not known to have carried out past attacks in Egypt. Two militant groups claimed responsibility the Mujahedeen of Egypt and the al-Qaida influenced Abdullah Azzam Brigades. Neither claim's authenticity could be verified. In response to the attacks, the U.S. Embassy issued a warning on its Web site Sunday advising American citizens "to avoid tourist areas in Cairo until the threat environment becomes clearer." Authorities said they do not regard the spike in terror attacks as a return to the violence that plagued Egypt during the 1990s. Saturday's drama, they said, resulted from the government crackdown on a small militant cell it says carried out the April 7 attack. But the opposition Al-Ghad Party said the violence was the result of the "environment of oppression and depression," a reference to the emergency laws the country has lived under since 1981. Opposition groups are demanding President Hosni Mubarak revoke the laws, which he claims are in place to fight terrorism. Mohammed Mahdi Akef, leader of the banned Muslim Brotherhood, condemned the attacks but said they were a "reaction to the injustice" Egyptians are suffering under a heavy-handed government empowered by emergency laws. Egyptian security experts urged the government to dispose of its emergency laws and draft specific anti-terrorism measures. "The core of the problem (prompting the violence) is political, therefore, keeping the emergency law active for security reasons yields negative results on the political scale," said Diaa Rashwan, an expert on Islamic groups. |
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