Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

MUNAZZAMAT AL JIHAD • 457is not directly connected with the Shi’ite militia Islamic Jihad ofLebanon now understood to have been a front for Hezbollah.The EIJ is an example of a Salafi (purist) Islamic fundamentalistgroup that believes it imperative for Muslim societies to return to apurely Islamic state similar to the city-state of Medina in the time ofthe Prophet Muhammad. Unlike the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood,Salafi fundamentalists, such as the EIJ, reject reformism and participationin electoral politics as a means of purifying Islamic society, asbeing themselves part of the un-Islamic corruptions of contemporaryMuslim civilization. That leaves jihad, or holy war in the path ofGod, as the only means to restore true Islam. This group regardedAnwar Sadat as an apostate ruler due to his westernization programsand to his role in shaping the Camp David peace accords with Israel,itself regarded by the EIJ as the absolute enemy of Islam. Therefore,as Sadat himself was regarded as an enemy of Islam, the religiousduty of jihad required the EIJ to fight and kill him. Sadat’s assassinsfully believed that once he was killed, the majority of Egyptian Muslimswould rise up and finish off the work of overthrowing what theyheld to be an apostate regime.Following the assassination of Sadat by EIJ members led by KhalidIslambuli, an Egyptian army officer and brother of MuhammadIslambuli, another EIJ member imprisoned earlier by the Egyptiangovernment, Egyptian security forces arrested remnants of the assassinsand other members of the EIJ not directly involved. The fiveprincipals were tried and later executed, while their spiritual leader,Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, was acquitted. Other EIJ activists inAsyut seized the local radio-TV station, several police stations, andthe security forces’ local headquarters. Government forces retookAsyut in two days of heavy fighting, costing the lives of 188, including54 government forces.The leadership of EIJ consisted of Abdul Rahman, a blind doctor ofIslamic religious law at Asyut University; Muhammad Abdul SalamFaraj, the group’s leading theoretician and publicist; Abbud AbdulLatif al Zumur, a lieutenant colonel in Egyptian military intelligence;and Mohammad Atta and Dr. Ayman al Zawahiri, both of whomlater merged the remnants of EIJ with al Qa’eda. At least 4 percentof Jihad members arrested before Sadat’s assassination turned out tobe members of the military, police, or intelligence services. In December1986 about 30 EIJ members, including two army majors, one