Mothertongue Name: al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya (GAI)

Aliases:

Al-Gamat al-Islamiya, Islamic Group (IG), Jamaat al-Islamiyya

Bases of Operation:

Afghanistan, Egypt

Date Formed:

1977

Strength:

Less than 500 members

Classifications:

Religious

Financial Sources:

The Egyptian Government believes that Iran, Bin Laden, and Afghan militant groups support
the organization. Also may obtain some funding through various Islamic NGOs.

Introduction
Jamaat al-Islamiyya is a radical group that seeks to install an Islamic regime in place of the
secular Egyptian government. According to the State Department's 2007 Country
Reporton Egypt, the group is responsible for the deaths of dozens of foreign tourists in
Egypt in the 1990s. It has been listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State
Department since 2001. Although the group has not carried out an attack in over a decade
and the Egyptian-based leadership has rejected violence, some members of a more extreme
faction are alleged to have connections to al-Qaeda. A spiritual leader who is aligned with
the extreme faction of Jamaat, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, was convicted and jailed in the
United States as the perpetrator of the 1993 World Trade Center attacks.

What is the history and ideology of Jamaat al-Islamiyya?

Jamaat al-Islamiyya, which means "the Islamic Group," is Egypt's largest Islamist militant
organization and has a presence both in Egypt and abroad. As a radical offshoot of the much
older and more grassroots-oriented Muslim Brotherhood, the group has been active since
the 1970s. According to the State Department, Jamaat attracts young unemployed graduates
and students from urban areas but operates primarily in the southern governorates of
Egypt.
Historically, members have campaigned to overthrow the secular Egyptian government and
replace it with an Islamic regime. Jamaat used violence within the country to influence a
popular movement supporting an Islamic regime and refused to consider a political
compromise. The group is best known for the Luxor attack in 1997 that killed fifty-eight
foreign tourists and four Egyptians. Attacks on tourists, however, put the group on the
fringe of society as the country began to suffer economically from a decrease in tourism.
Tourism officials said that the Luxor attack cost Egypt an estimated 50 percent of its

average $3.7 billion tourism revenue in 1998, reported the BBC. It is estimated that it
took two years for tourism to rebound to the pre-Luxor attack numbers. Following a violent
campaign of attacks against the Egyptian government, Coptic Christians, tourists, and other
targets, Jamaat al-Islamiyya has largely honored a March 1999 cease-fire with the Egyptian
government.
Jamaat targeted foreign tourists in Egypt in many attacks on the grounds that they
represent the seeping of Western characteristics, such as secularism, into
Egyptian culture. The anti-secularism sentiment led some members, mainly the exiled
people who are affliated with al-Qaeda, from the regime-change doctrine towards a
broader anti-Western campaign. Jamaat al-Islamiyya, as an organization, has not
specifically attacked U.S. citizens or facilities, but "disaffected" members have expressed
intentions to attack the United States and are known to have joined al-Qaeda and trained at
its camps in Afghanistan, the State Department said in its 2005 Country Report on
Egypt. The Jamaat spiritual leader, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, is serving a life
sentence in the United States for his involvement in the 1993 attack on the World Trade
Center. (In April 2002, the Justice Department charged that Rahman tried to direct further
terrorist operations from his cell in Minnesota.)

What is the current status of Jamaat al-Islamiyya?

The loosely organized Jamaat was not active in 2007 and has not claimed responsibility for
any recent attacks. The State Department says that the external wing, composed of exiled
Egyptians, still seeks to overthrow the government and replace it with an Islamic regime.
Despite remaining classified as the largest militant group in Egypt, Jamaat's senior
leadership in the country has largely denounced violence over the last several years.
In August 2006 Ayman al-Zawahiri, an associate of Osama bin Laden, announced that
Jamaat al-Islamiyya had merged with al-Qaeda. Jamaat leadership in Egypt quickly rejected
the claim, according to the State Department. The faction of Jamaat leadership that adhered
to two cease-fires in the late 1990s "declared the use of violence misguided and renounced
its future use" in March 2002 although members abroad rejected this dramatic shift in
ideology, says the State Department.

What attacks is Jamaat al-Islamiyya responsible for?

Jamaat al-Islamiyya members collaborated with the Egyptian Islamic Jihad on the
assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981 and, according to the State
Department, is suspected in an unsuccessful assassination attempt against President Hosni

Mubarak in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1995. Selected other attacks have been attributed to
the group by press reports:

A 1992-1993 series of attacks killed dozens;

The 1992 assassination of a radical Islam opponent, Farag Foda, was

claimed by Jamaat;

A September 1997 ambush near the Egyptian Museum in Cairo killed nine
German tourists and their driver;

A November 1997 attack on a resort in Luxor killed fifty-eight tourists and

four Egyptians in a shooting spree.

Is Jamaat al-Islamiyya connected to al-Qaeda?

After a 1997 cease-fire Jamaat unofficially split into two factions. One group, led by Mustafa
Hamza, agreed to the cease-fire. Rifa'i Taha Musa and his followers supported the militant
operations. Musa, in the following year, signed Osama bin Laden's 1998 fatwa that called for
attacks on the United States. According to the State Department, Musa went missing in
2001 several months after publishing a book justifying militant operations that produce
mass casualties.
Since Zawahiri asserted an al-Qaeda connection with Jamaat, the people opposed to the
cease-fire separated from the group and Jamaat "has since concentrated its efforts on
revising its former extremist worldview and distinguishing itself from al-Qaeda," wrote the
Jamestown Institute in a 2006 report.
The State Department claims that al-Qaeda and other Afghan militant groups support
Jamaat.

What has Egypt done to combat Jamaat al-Islamiyya?

Egypt has waged a bitter campaign of state violence, mass arrests, and financial crackdowns
against Jamaat al-Islamiyya, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and other Islamist groups during
much of the 1990s. Experts say the government has largely succeeded in stopping them
from carrying out terrorist attacks inside Egypt. But human rights groups say that Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak's regime has often used torture as part of its crackdown and
sometimes has taken family members of Islamist leaders hostage.

Hundreds of Islamists were released from Egyptian prisons in the autumn of 2003. Among
those set free was Jamaat al-Islamiyya leader Karam Zuhdi, who expressed regret for his
collaboration with Egyptian Islamic Jihad in the 1981 assassination of former Egyptian
President Anwar Sadat. As a political gesture, President Mubarak's government timed the
release of Zuhdi and Islamists to coincide with the 30th anniversary of Egypt's 1973 war
with Israel.