Egyptian Extremist Rewriting Rationale For Armed Struggle

Sherif lived underground with Ayman al-Zawahiri as Islamic Jihad fought to topple the Egyptian state under the vague goal of turning the country over to the rule of Islamic scholars, Habib said.

Zawahiri at the time was "a very quiet person, very polite, very shy," said retired Gen. Fouad Allam, a former Egyptian state security director who interrogated Zawahiri three times.

Fellow activists regarded Sherif as a more charismatic figure who outshone and out-thought Zawahiri, Gerges said.

Sherif's 1980s book, "Basic Principles in Making Preparations for Jihad," became the theological guide to combat for al-Qaeda and other radical Islamic groups. In it, he labeled as apostates judges, lawyers, soldiers, police and much of the rest of Egyptian society, casting them as legitimate targets for killing.

The concept of jihad itself is much debated among Muslims. Meaning "struggle," jihad is regarded as a duty that most see as a personal and peaceful commitment to carry out the word of God. For Sherif and others, the struggle remains an armed one.

Egypt, with the world's largest Arab population, grew ever more into a police state as it battled the Islamic Group and Islamic Jihad. More than 1,000 militants, members of security forces, Egyptian civilians and foreign tourists died in the conflict.

"The state was dealing with Islamists as if it were defending itself to the last breath," Habib recalled. "More than 100 were executed. All the doors of the prisons were thrown open" to admit Islamic radicals. "There was the heaviest torture with no limits, no rules."

Outbattled in Egypt, Zawahiri slipped away to Afghanistan, and the fight against Soviet occupation troops, where Sherif followed him.

As Egypt's security forces jailed thousands of members of Islamic Jihad, the Islamic Group and other organizations, Egyptian state security officials struggled to discredit their religious rationale for armed attacks, said Allam, the former Egyptian state security director.

In the late 1990s, imprisoned leaders of the Islamic Group issued written revisions that Gerges said amounted to unconditional surrender.

Allam and others promoted the revisions by jailed Islamic leaders, arranging theological debates carried in television programs and newspapers and held in public squares and sports arenas.

The revisions led to the release of thousands of Islamic Group members, to a life of continuing close surveillance by Egyptian security forces. Egypt forbids freed Islamic Group members from entering politics or speaking to reporters. The aging radicals largely obey.