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Egypt’s Islamist Group: From Terrorism to Politics

After three decades underground, Gamaa al Islamiyya (the Islamic Group) has emerged as a formal political player vying for a role in shaping the new order in Egypt. Its evolution—from fighting for God’s rule in Egypt to embracing man-made government—reflects the wider transformation of Islamist movements in the Arab world’s most populous state.

After three decades underground, Gamaa al Islamiyya (the Islamic Group) has emerged as a formal political player vying for a role in shaping the new order in Egypt. Its evolution—from fighting for God’s rule in Egypt to embracing man-made government—reflects the wider transformation of Islamist movements in the Arab world’s most populous state.

But it also reflects the precarious transition. The Islamic Group is part of Egypt’s new parliament even as it remains on the U.S. State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. It is a microcosm of the challenges the United States faces in crafting policy toward groups long associated with extremist ideologies or militant tactics.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the Islamic Group was synonymous with terrorist attacks on foreign tourists as well as Egyptian civilians. In 1981, members of Gamaa cooperated with associates of Ayman al Zawahiri, now the head of al Qaida, to assassinate President Anwar Sadat. Some members fled Egypt and later joined up with al Qaida. And in 1997, a Gamaa cell gunned down 62 tourists and Egyptians at Luxor’s Temple of Queen Hatshepsut.

But Gamaa renounced violence in 2003. Many of its jailed leaders were part of the so-called prison debates, where members spent years discussing the efficacy of violence in producing political change. After the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak in 2011, it held intense deliberations about formally entering politics. The result was a purge of old leadership, the launch of the new Building and Development Party (BDP), and a run for the same political offices that it once condemned.

Along with many other Islamic and Islamist groups, Gamaa has mobilized followers to support its political ends both in the streets and at the polling booths. Its members are generally ultra-conservative Salafis, who advocate remaking Egypt into a Muslim emirate. The Islamic Group flirted with the idea of an election coalition with the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, then opted to join the Islamist Bloc, a Salafi coalition dominated by the Nour Party, for the 2011-12 parliamentary elections. The al Asala Party is the other party in the hardline coalition.

Thirteen members of Gamaa were elected to the new Egyptian parliament, which was seated in January 2012. The Building and Development Party is now one of five Islamist parties--which together hold 350 seats--in the 508-seat People’s Assembly.

Since the election, the Building and Development Party has tried to position itself as a political alternative if the two larger Islamist parties—Freedom and Justice and the Nour Party--fail to adequately address political or economic demands. The Islamic Group also continues to use inflammatory rhetoric about liberal and secular parties. In March, Assem Abdel Meguid, a member of the BDP’s Shura Council, blamed liberals for instability in Egypt.

But  Gamaa’s positions fluctuate too. Officially, it seeks to implement Islamic law in Egypt. It generally advocates the same type of Islamic rule in the Arab world as al Qaeda. And its platform envisions creation of an “Islamic axis” including Iran and Turkey as one step in reviving the Caliphate. Like al Qaeda, its foreign policy goals include winning freedom for Omar Abdel Rahman from a U.S. federal prison, where the blind Egyptian sheikh is serving time for a role in the 1993 bombing of New York’s World Trade Center.

At the same time, its political party has agreed to accept the 1971 constitution crafted by former President Anwar Sadat—at least for now. It has formally abandoned al Qaeda’s war against the West and “apostate” Middle East regimes. And in a recent diplomatic flare-up between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Gamaa actually took the Saudi side. Its leaders said the kingdom was too important to Egypt to break ties—a pragmatic position in stark contrast to al Qaeda’s condemnation of the Saudi monarchy.

But the Gamaa party is still in political purgatory. It is treated as a full-fledged member of the legislature. Its parliamentarians are consulted by their peers in the People’s Assembly on issues ranging from the military’s role in government to writing a new constitution. And its allies in the Nour Party control roughly one-quarter of the lower house. But the outside world is unlikely to engage seriously with the ultra-conservative party as long as it remains on the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

Zack Gold is a Washington-based Middle East analyst conducting research on Egyptian Islamist groups.

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