Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya: From Terrorism to Nonviolence

Abstract

In 1981, al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Over the next two decades, the group transformed from one of the most active terrorist groups in Egypt to an Islamist group that officially renounced armed action. The chapter first traces the rise of the group and investigates what pushed it to resort to violence. The increased scale and scope of violence was generated by the same causal mechanisms that explained the Muslim Brotherhood’s turn to violence: politicization, mistrust of government, a sense of betrayal by the regime, desire for revenge, and a slippery slope of militarization. The chapter then looks at the transformation of the organization starting with the 1997 Nonviolence Initiative. The analysis reveals that the high audience cost of violence and growing public condemnation led al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya’s leaders to rethink the group’s mission and push for permanent disengagement from violence.