The retractions of the old guard of Islamist militants will likely not touch the new generation of youth drawn to jihad, writes Amr Elshoubaki* The recent ideological retractions of Sayed Imam El-Sherif, founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, mark the beginning of a major departure from the theological underpinnings that governed the militant Islamist organisation's actions in the 1980s and 1990s. The ideological shift -- probably more than practical realities -- will make it extremely difficult for the organisation and those inspired by it to revert to violence and terrorism. In Correct Guidance of the Jihad in Egypt and the World, Sheikh Imam refuted an earlier contention that rebellion was warranted against a ruler that did not apply Islamic law. Now he holds it is wrong to rise up in the name of jihad against a Muslim ruler in pursuit of the application of Sharia law. In general, he rejects ideas that lend themselves to the notion that "the ends justify the means". He writes, for example, "it is regrettable that some pursue forbidden means to obtain money, justifying their actions on the grounds that this money is needed for jihad. Thus, they kidnap innocent people in order to demand ransom, or they rob blameless persons in the course of which they might commit wrongful murder. It is a grave sin to attack the persons and property of blameless persons." On fighting unjust rule, Sheikh Imam holds, contrary to his earlier stance, that insurrection can result in many evils. During recent decades, he writes, Muslim countries have experienced numerous incidents of insurrection in the name of holy war and with the purpose of establishing the rule of Islamic law in these countries. These incidents gave rise to grave ills at the level of Islamic groups and at the level of the countries in which they occurred. Wrong is not redressed by a like wrong, and certainly not by a worse wrong. In addition, he holds that jihad is not the only legitimate way to confront realities inconsistent with Islamic precepts. Other available options are proselytising, immigration or retreat, forgiveness and lenience, disregarding or enduring the offence, and dissimulating one's faith. Only the Islamic jurist can best judge which alternative is the most appropriate response to a given reality. The prophet and many of his companions resorted to all of these courses at one time or another, depending upon their abilities, the attendant circumstances, which would best serve Islam and the faithful, and which would simultaneously avert harm or corruption. As significant as these revisions are, and however powerfully they affect local jihadist elements, it is doubtful whether they will have a similar impact on Al-Qaeda cells elsewhere in the world. The terrorism that reared its head on 11 September 2001, and subsequently struck other countries, such as Britain, Spain, Turkey, Egypt and Morocco, is so markedly different in magnitude and in the nature of its goals from the jihadist violence of the last quarter of the last century that ideological retractions may not carry sufficient weight to even register with its architects. When the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the Gamaa Islamiya emerged as distinct militant groups in the 1970s and 1980s, they gelled around certain theological principles on the basis of which they held that the local ruling authority was heretical and had to be overthrown. Where Islamic Jihad proclaimed dozens of theological arguments in justification of this notion, the more populist Gamaa Islamiya produced the "Charter of Islamic Action". Both organisations mounted intensive recruitment drives, incorporating thousands of disaffected youths into their tightly guarded and controlled organisational structures. For the most part, they had highly centralised hierarchies with ranks of mid-level officers to convey orders to bases spread throughout all Egyptian cities and governorates. Recruits were ideologically indoctrinated and trained to engage in armed confrontation with the "enemy": government officials, security agencies, Copts, secularists and ordinary people who happened to fall in the crossfire of their violence. But it was Sheikh Imam, himself, who was the most influential ideologue of the militant Jihadist movement. In Basic Principles for Preparing for Jihad, which he wrote while he was in Afghanistan, and then in his 1200-page Compendium on the Quest of Religious Knowledge, he laid out his theological vision on insurrection and presented his justification for violence targeting foreigners and Egyptians alike. Most of that generation of the Jihad were ideologically formed on the basis of these and other long, complex and extremely radical doctrinal works, as well as through hundreds of indoctrination pamphlets. They were also put through several years of rigorous physical and military training before engaging in their operations. Many of them believe that the assassination of President Anwar El-Sadat in 1981 was precipitate and put paid to their dream of an "Islamic coup" against the Egyptian regime. Therefore, Sheikh Imam's revisions will affect those who engaged in and subscribed to violence through their membership in the large, hierarchically organised jihadist organisations that were ideologically committed to the overthrow of regimes in, for example, Egypt and Algeria. But these are not the forms of the jihadist movement that prevails today. On the one hand, their ideological indoctrination was not as rigorous and sophisticated as that of the Jihad recruits. On the other, they do not share the same goals as the large jihadist organisations in Egypt and Algeria. Whatever the aims of the terrorist attacks in New York, Madrid, London, Sharm El-Sheikh, Casablanca and downtown Cairo were, they were not to overthrow existing regimes. There is a new order of terrorism at work, shaped by different motives. The above-mentioned incidents were carried out by small groups of individuals with no clear affiliation to a larger hierarchically structured jihadist organisation and with no intent of formulating an ideological project that clarifies a political end that the exercise of violence is aimed to accomplish. The bombing of the World Trade Center towers marks the transition from what we might term the era of "jihadist ideology" to the era of "jihadist action". Jihad now has a markedly individualistic quality: motives seem more immediate and emotional (revenge) and aims less idealistic and more personal (instant salvation through martyrdom). In addition, ideological formation/indoctrination is at once much easier (through some selective surfing on the Internet) and superficial -- a far cry from having to wade through the long, complex and scholarly argumentation of Sheikh Imam. The chances are that the youths inspired by Al-Qaeda would have gone ahead with terrorist acts even if Sheikh Imam had issued his retractions five years ago. The members of the so-called London cell, which consisted of only five individuals, would never grasp what the Jihad leader wrote because they proceeded from an entirely different direction. Theirs was a reaction to a sorrowful political and social reality, a reaction that they dressed with a jihadist gloss that would turn their deaths into a gateway to paradise. Imagine the number of like-minded youths tragic conditions such as those in Iraq could create, youths ready to blow themselves up after barely two months of indoctrination. Sheikh Imam's revisions are undoubtedly sincere and historic. But they will not influence the new terrorist generation, because they were written with the old style of jihad in mind. They, therefore, do not take into account the new youth, which is essentially an unknown quantity and which operates independently and who seldom read books exceeding 50 pages let alone voluminous philosophical or theological treatises. * The writer is an analyst at the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies
