Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

462 • MUSLIM BROTHERHOODto keep the group from running candidates in the parliamentary electionsscheduled for 28 November 1995.While officially banned as a political party, the Ikhwan’s membersare permitted to run as independent candidates. In the 2005 parliamentaryelections, Ikhwan members won 88 seats in the 454-seatPeople’s Assembly, forming the largest opposition bloc.As the Ikhwan propagated and reproduced itself in other Arablands, it has shown remarkable adaptation to local circumstances,becoming a political party wherever electoral competition promisedpower, such as in Egypt or pre-1963 Syria, or becoming charitableand educational societies where political competition was more constrained,such as in Jordan or the emirates of the Arabian peninsula.In Tunisia the Ikhwan renamed itself the Hizb al Islami (the IslamicParty), the direct precursor of the Islamic Tendency Movement.In Algeria the Ikhwan called itself the Ahl al Da’wa, People of theCall (to faith), which created the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS). Inthe Gaza Strip and West Bank, the Palestinian branch of the Ikhwanformed the Islamic Resistance Movement, known also as Hamas,which played a major role in the intifada of 1987–1991 as well as interrorist attacks in Israel following the September 1993 peace accordand which seized control of the Gaza Strip from Palestinian Authorityforces in June 2007.In Syria, where the Ikhwan have been banned since the Ba’thistcoup of 1963, they have attempted to carry out an armed insurgencywith occasional major terrorist acts, which have been retaliatedagainst by massive acts of Syrian state terror. Following the militarydefeat of Syria in the 1967 war with Israel, Ikhwan members fromthe Syrian cities of Homs, Aleppo, and Hama underwent militarytraining in al Fatah camps in Jordan, which marked the transformationof the Syrian Ikhwan from a party to a paramilitary movement.Following Syrian President Hafez al Asad’s decision in 1976 to enterthe Lebanese civil war on the side of the Maronite Christian forcesand against the Palestinians, the Ikhwan decided to undertake jihadagainst the Syrian regime. In February 1978 the Ikhwan assassinatedkey Ba’thist officials and attacked Rifaat al Asad, the president’syounger brother, who headed the national security forces. On 16 June1979 the Ikhwan began to strike at police stations, Ba’thist party offices,and government and military facilities, beginning with a massacreof military cadets at the Aleppo Artillery School. The Ikhwan