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. Read the rest of this a
