Nickdfresh
07-16-2007, 06:44 PM
Egyptian Extremist Rewriting Rationale For Armed Struggle
Jailhouse Dissent Seen as Challenge to Al-Qaeda
By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/14/AR2007071401182.html?hpid=moreheadlines) Foreign Service
Sunday, July 15, 2007; A18
CAIRO -- The guerrilla leader who crafted what became al-Qaeda's guide to jihad is preparing to renounce its extremes, including the killing of innocent civilians, according to his onetime colleagues and his own writings.
Abdul-Aziz el-Sherif, an emir, or top leader, of the armed Egyptian movement Islamic Jihad and a longtime associate of al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, is writing his dissent behind prison walls on Egypt's Nile River.
Such jailhouse "revisions," as they are known here, have helped to widen rifts between al-Qaeda and some of its former admirers and have led to the release of thousands of erstwhile Islamic extremists from Egypt's prisons.
"It will be a challenge to al-Qaeda, from someone from inside, who speaks the same language," said Kamal Habib, a former Islamic Jihad leader imprisoned for 10 years after Islamic extremists assassinated President Anwar Sadat in 1981.
Habib, who bears scars from cigarettes that he said Egyptian security officials stubbed out in his palms during interrogations, said that based on his own experience, Sherif probably was tortured after he was imprisoned in Egypt in 2004 but not as he has been writing his revision.
"Torture is not the thing to break Sayed Imam," Habib said, using an honorific for Sherif. "He is very strong."
Fawaz A. Gerges, a Middle East scholar at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, said the revisions "pour fuel on a raging struggle within the jihadist community and . . . challenge the narrative offered by Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden."
Without such dissents, armed attacks "would be much greater, much broader and much more devastating," Gerges said.
The main body of Sherif's revision is a tract of no more than 100 pages that Egypt's state security forces and state-allied religious scholars are vetting. Publication is expected to lead to Egypt's release of up to 5,000 former Islamic Jihad members and other activists.
Among other well known Islamic Jihad figures behind bars in Egypt, Abbud al-Zumar, another former leader, is believed to support Sherif's revision; Mohammed al-Zawahiri, the younger brother of the al-Qaeda deputy leader, publicly "neither supports nor condemns it," according to an associate of the radicals familiar with the revision. He spoke on condition of anonymity.
The associate said he was not convinced of the sincerity of Sherif's revision, in part because Sherif had argued at length against revisions issued by Egypt's other leading militant movement, the Islamic Group.
Sherif and the Zawahiri brothers were the sons of families from the privileged suburbs of north Cairo who helped build the cells that grew into Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Group.
Sherif lived underground with Ayman al-Zawahiri as Islamic Jihad fought to topple the Egyptian state under the vague goal of turning the country over to the rule of Islamic scholars, Habib said.
Zawahiri at the time was "a very quiet person, very polite, very shy," said retired Gen. Fouad Allam, a former Egyptian state security director who interrogated Zawahiri three times.
Fellow activists regarded Sherif as a more charismatic figure who outshone and out-thought Zawahiri, Gerges said.
Sherif's 1980s book, "Basic Principles in Making Preparations for Jihad," became the theological guide to combat for al-Qaeda and other radical Islamic groups. In it, he labeled as apostates judges, lawyers, soldiers, police and much of the rest of Egyptian society, casting them as legitimate targets for killing.
The concept of jihad itself is much debated among Muslims. Meaning "struggle," jihad is regarded as a duty that most see as a personal and peaceful commitment to carry out the word of God. For Sherif and others, the struggle remains an armed one.
Egypt, with the world's largest Arab population, grew ever more into a police state as it battled the Islamic Group and Islamic Jihad. More than 1,000 militants, members of security forces, Egyptian civilians and foreign tourists died in the conflict.
"The state was dealing with Islamists as if it were defending itself to the last breath," Habib recalled. "More than 100 were executed. All the doors of the prisons were thrown open" to admit Islamic radicals. "There was the heaviest torture with no limits, no rules."
Outbattled in Egypt, Zawahiri slipped away to Afghanistan, and the fight against Soviet occupation troops, where Sherif followed him.
As Egypt's security forces jailed thousands of members of Islamic Jihad, the Islamic Group and other organizations, Egyptian state security officials struggled to discredit their religious rationale for armed attacks, said Allam, the former Egyptian state security director.
In the late 1990s, imprisoned leaders of the Islamic Group issued written revisions that Gerges said amounted to unconditional surrender.
Allam and others promoted the revisions by jailed Islamic leaders, arranging theological debates carried in television programs and newspapers and held in public squares and sports arenas.
The revisions led to the release of thousands of Islamic Group members, to a life of continuing close surveillance by Egyptian security forces. Egypt forbids freed Islamic Group members from entering politics or speaking to reporters. The aging radicals largely obey.
The effectiveness of the revisions is suggested by a nonevent, Gerges said. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington, "Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden made the argument that if the United States did invade Afghanistan . . . a 'river' of recruits would flow into Afghanistan" to defend al-Qaeda, Gerges said. "It turned into a trickle of recruits." The Islamic Group alone, Gerges said, could have opened its pool of 100,000 members to al-Qaeda.
The only major attacks in Egypt over the past 10 years have been bombings at Sinai resorts. Who directed the attacks remains in dispute.
Former fighters and observers of the radical movements stress that ideological change such as Sherif's comes only after military defeat.
"Their dream was completely destroyed," said Amr Elshobaki, an analyst at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. "This might have been possible for them to endure if they thought their project had a chance to succeed, but these groups became history."
The path of Sherif's own journey to revision is difficult to trace. Family members have told human rights groups that he twice broke with Zawahiri over his friend's embrace of violence. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, however, Sherif wrote, "As long as America is an infidel enemy, terrorizing it is a duty."
Authorities in Yemen arrested Sherif in 2001 and extradited him to Egypt in 2004. Sherif now spends most of his time in isolation in the Toura prison south of Cairo, according to former colleagues and analysts.
In a letter faxed from Toura to the London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper this year, Sherif pointed to what he called the prohibitions in Islamic law against excesses in jihad and offered what analysts saw as a preview of his revision.
He cited Koranic verse: "Fight in the cause of God those who fight you, but do not transgress the limits, for God loveth not transgressors."
His letter said Islam forbids killing people solely on the grounds of their nationality, skin color or sect, and it forbids killing innocents.
Sherif is expected to insist that former militants be incorporated into Egypt's political life, Gerges said.
Impossible, said Makram Mohammed Ahmed, an official with Egypt's Press Syndicate who has taken part in the prison dialogues leading to the revisions.
"Part of the deal with them is that there would not be a political party," Ahmed said this month in a Cairo meeting on the revisions that brought state security officials together with the militants and other activists they had battled.
Others scoff at any change of heart.
"We're looking at a bargain between the Islamic Group, Islamic Jihad and the state in return for reevaluating criminal files and stopping some due executions," said Nabil Abdel-Fattah, an analyst at the Al-Ahram Center.
Islamic Jihad's revision comes as the group itself grows into something of an anachronism.
Western governments today are fighting a new era of decentralized, often freelance Islamic fighters -- members of what Gerges called "the Iraq generation" -- who are angered by the U.S. occupation of Iraq and support of Israel.
"Jihad today is no longer a religious idea. It's a political idea, a protest against U.S. activities," said Allam, the retired state security director, sitting on his flower-lined patio next to the Mediterranean, his words accompanied by the crash of waves notorious for their undertow. "The whole world has to do revisions."
Jailhouse Dissent Seen as Challenge to Al-Qaeda
By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/14/AR2007071401182.html?hpid=moreheadlines) Foreign Service
Sunday, July 15, 2007; A18
CAIRO -- The guerrilla leader who crafted what became al-Qaeda's guide to jihad is preparing to renounce its extremes, including the killing of innocent civilians, according to his onetime colleagues and his own writings.
Abdul-Aziz el-Sherif, an emir, or top leader, of the armed Egyptian movement Islamic Jihad and a longtime associate of al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, is writing his dissent behind prison walls on Egypt's Nile River.
Such jailhouse "revisions," as they are known here, have helped to widen rifts between al-Qaeda and some of its former admirers and have led to the release of thousands of erstwhile Islamic extremists from Egypt's prisons.
"It will be a challenge to al-Qaeda, from someone from inside, who speaks the same language," said Kamal Habib, a former Islamic Jihad leader imprisoned for 10 years after Islamic extremists assassinated President Anwar Sadat in 1981.
Habib, who bears scars from cigarettes that he said Egyptian security officials stubbed out in his palms during interrogations, said that based on his own experience, Sherif probably was tortured after he was imprisoned in Egypt in 2004 but not as he has been writing his revision.
"Torture is not the thing to break Sayed Imam," Habib said, using an honorific for Sherif. "He is very strong."
Fawaz A. Gerges, a Middle East scholar at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, said the revisions "pour fuel on a raging struggle within the jihadist community and . . . challenge the narrative offered by Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden."
Without such dissents, armed attacks "would be much greater, much broader and much more devastating," Gerges said.
The main body of Sherif's revision is a tract of no more than 100 pages that Egypt's state security forces and state-allied religious scholars are vetting. Publication is expected to lead to Egypt's release of up to 5,000 former Islamic Jihad members and other activists.
Among other well known Islamic Jihad figures behind bars in Egypt, Abbud al-Zumar, another former leader, is believed to support Sherif's revision; Mohammed al-Zawahiri, the younger brother of the al-Qaeda deputy leader, publicly "neither supports nor condemns it," according to an associate of the radicals familiar with the revision. He spoke on condition of anonymity.
The associate said he was not convinced of the sincerity of Sherif's revision, in part because Sherif had argued at length against revisions issued by Egypt's other leading militant movement, the Islamic Group.
Sherif and the Zawahiri brothers were the sons of families from the privileged suburbs of north Cairo who helped build the cells that grew into Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Group.
Sherif lived underground with Ayman al-Zawahiri as Islamic Jihad fought to topple the Egyptian state under the vague goal of turning the country over to the rule of Islamic scholars, Habib said.
Zawahiri at the time was "a very quiet person, very polite, very shy," said retired Gen. Fouad Allam, a former Egyptian state security director who interrogated Zawahiri three times.
Fellow activists regarded Sherif as a more charismatic figure who outshone and out-thought Zawahiri, Gerges said.
Sherif's 1980s book, "Basic Principles in Making Preparations for Jihad," became the theological guide to combat for al-Qaeda and other radical Islamic groups. In it, he labeled as apostates judges, lawyers, soldiers, police and much of the rest of Egyptian society, casting them as legitimate targets for killing.
The concept of jihad itself is much debated among Muslims. Meaning "struggle," jihad is regarded as a duty that most see as a personal and peaceful commitment to carry out the word of God. For Sherif and others, the struggle remains an armed one.
Egypt, with the world's largest Arab population, grew ever more into a police state as it battled the Islamic Group and Islamic Jihad. More than 1,000 militants, members of security forces, Egyptian civilians and foreign tourists died in the conflict.
"The state was dealing with Islamists as if it were defending itself to the last breath," Habib recalled. "More than 100 were executed. All the doors of the prisons were thrown open" to admit Islamic radicals. "There was the heaviest torture with no limits, no rules."
Outbattled in Egypt, Zawahiri slipped away to Afghanistan, and the fight against Soviet occupation troops, where Sherif followed him.
As Egypt's security forces jailed thousands of members of Islamic Jihad, the Islamic Group and other organizations, Egyptian state security officials struggled to discredit their religious rationale for armed attacks, said Allam, the former Egyptian state security director.
In the late 1990s, imprisoned leaders of the Islamic Group issued written revisions that Gerges said amounted to unconditional surrender.
Allam and others promoted the revisions by jailed Islamic leaders, arranging theological debates carried in television programs and newspapers and held in public squares and sports arenas.
The revisions led to the release of thousands of Islamic Group members, to a life of continuing close surveillance by Egyptian security forces. Egypt forbids freed Islamic Group members from entering politics or speaking to reporters. The aging radicals largely obey.
The effectiveness of the revisions is suggested by a nonevent, Gerges said. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington, "Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden made the argument that if the United States did invade Afghanistan . . . a 'river' of recruits would flow into Afghanistan" to defend al-Qaeda, Gerges said. "It turned into a trickle of recruits." The Islamic Group alone, Gerges said, could have opened its pool of 100,000 members to al-Qaeda.
The only major attacks in Egypt over the past 10 years have been bombings at Sinai resorts. Who directed the attacks remains in dispute.
Former fighters and observers of the radical movements stress that ideological change such as Sherif's comes only after military defeat.
"Their dream was completely destroyed," said Amr Elshobaki, an analyst at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. "This might have been possible for them to endure if they thought their project had a chance to succeed, but these groups became history."
The path of Sherif's own journey to revision is difficult to trace. Family members have told human rights groups that he twice broke with Zawahiri over his friend's embrace of violence. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, however, Sherif wrote, "As long as America is an infidel enemy, terrorizing it is a duty."
Authorities in Yemen arrested Sherif in 2001 and extradited him to Egypt in 2004. Sherif now spends most of his time in isolation in the Toura prison south of Cairo, according to former colleagues and analysts.
In a letter faxed from Toura to the London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper this year, Sherif pointed to what he called the prohibitions in Islamic law against excesses in jihad and offered what analysts saw as a preview of his revision.
He cited Koranic verse: "Fight in the cause of God those who fight you, but do not transgress the limits, for God loveth not transgressors."
His letter said Islam forbids killing people solely on the grounds of their nationality, skin color or sect, and it forbids killing innocents.
Sherif is expected to insist that former militants be incorporated into Egypt's political life, Gerges said.
Impossible, said Makram Mohammed Ahmed, an official with Egypt's Press Syndicate who has taken part in the prison dialogues leading to the revisions.
"Part of the deal with them is that there would not be a political party," Ahmed said this month in a Cairo meeting on the revisions that brought state security officials together with the militants and other activists they had battled.
Others scoff at any change of heart.
"We're looking at a bargain between the Islamic Group, Islamic Jihad and the state in return for reevaluating criminal files and stopping some due executions," said Nabil Abdel-Fattah, an analyst at the Al-Ahram Center.
Islamic Jihad's revision comes as the group itself grows into something of an anachronism.
Western governments today are fighting a new era of decentralized, often freelance Islamic fighters -- members of what Gerges called "the Iraq generation" -- who are angered by the U.S. occupation of Iraq and support of Israel.
"Jihad today is no longer a religious idea. It's a political idea, a protest against U.S. activities," said Allam, the retired state security director, sitting on his flower-lined patio next to the Mediterranean, his words accompanied by the crash of waves notorious for their undertow. "The whole world has to do revisions."