Initiative to Stop the Violence

Sadat's Assassins and the Renunciation of Political Violence

Al-Islamiyah Al-Gama'Ah, Jackson Sherman A.

Formerly one of the largest and most militant Islamic organizations in the Middle East, Egypt's al-Gama'ah al-Islamiyah is believed to have played an instrumental role in numerous acts of global terrorism, including the assassination of President Anwar Sadat and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In later years, however, the organization issued a surprising renunciation of violence, repudiating its former ideology and replacing it with a shari'a-based understanding and assessment of the purpose and proper application of jihad. This key manifesto of modern Islamist thought is now available to an English-speaking audience in an eminently readable translation by noted Islamic scholar Sherman A. Jackson. Unlike other Western and Muslim critiques of violent extremism in general, and of the ideology of al-Qaeda in particular, this important work emerges from within the movement of Middle Eastern Islamic activism, both challenging and enriching prevailing notions about the role of Islamists in fighting the scourge of extremist politics, blind anti-Westernism and, alas, wayward jihad.

About the Author

Al-Gama'ah al-Islamiyya, one of the oldest and largest Islamist organizations in Egypt, has long been dedicated to the replacement of that country's secular government with a shari'a state. They are the organization behind Omar Abdel Rahman, who coordinated the 1993 World Trade Center bombings; they were involved for many years in the persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt; and they are believed to have been involved in the assassination of Anwar Sadat following the Camp David Accords with Israel. In 1997, on the basis of a reinterpretation of Islam and the meaning of shari'a law, the group renounced violence as a means of advancing its goals. In 2011 they formed a political party, the Building and Development Party, which held 13 seats in the Egyptian Parliament in 2012.

Sherman A. Jackson holds the King Faisal Chair in Islamic Thought and Culture and is Professor of Religion and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. His books include "On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam: Abu Hamid al-Ghazali's Faysal al-Tafriqa" (OUP 2002). In 2009 he was named among the 500 most influential Muslims in the world by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center in Amman, Jordan.

Reviews

"This much-needed translation of original documents offers superb evidence that the proclivity of the Islamic tradition with violence is not the main reason for radical Islam" – Jocelyne Cesari, Senior Research Fellow at the Berkley Center for Peace, Religion and World Affairs at Georgetown University and Director of the Islam in the West Program at Harvard University

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