Egyptian Extremist Rewriting Rationale For Armed Struggle

The effectiveness of the revisions is suggested by a nonevent, Gerges said. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington, "Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden made the argument that if the United States did invade Afghanistan . . . a 'river' of recruits would flow into Afghanistan" to defend al-Qaeda, Gerges said. "It turned into a trickle of recruits." The Islamic Group alone, Gerges said, could have opened its pool of 100,000 members to al-Qaeda.

The only major attacks in Egypt over the past 10 years have been bombings at Sinai resorts. Who directed the attacks remains in dispute.

Former fighters and observers of the radical movements stress that ideological change such as Sherif's comes only after military defeat.

"Their dream was completely destroyed," said Amr Elshobaki, an analyst at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. "This might have been possible for them to endure if they thought their project had a chance to succeed, but these groups became history."

The path of Sherif's own journey to revision is difficult to trace. Family members have told human rights groups that he twice broke with Zawahiri over his friend's embrace of violence. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, however, Sherif wrote, "As long as America is an infidel enemy, terrorizing it is a duty."

Authorities in Yemen arrested Sherif in 2001 and extradited him to Egypt in 2004. Sherif now spends most of his time in isolation in the Toura prison south of Cairo, according to former colleagues and analysts.

In a letter faxed from Toura to the London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper this year, Sherif pointed to what he called the prohibitions in Islamic law against excesses in jihad and offered what analysts saw as a preview of his revision.

He cited Koranic verse: "Fight in the cause of God those who fight you, but do not transgress the limits, for God loveth not transgressors."

His letter said Islam forbids killing people solely on the grounds of their nationality, skin color or sect, and it forbids killing innocents.

Sherif is expected to insist that former militants be incorporated into Egypt's political life, Gerges said.

Impossible, said Makram Mohammed Ahmed, an official with Egypt's Press Syndicate who has taken part in the prison dialogues leading to the revisions.

"Part of the deal with them is that there would not be a political party," Ahmed said this month in a Cairo meeting on the revisions that brought state security officials together with the militants and other activists they had battled.

Others scoff at any change of heart.

"We're looking at a bargain between the Islamic Group, Islamic Jihad and the state in return for reevaluating criminal files and stopping some due executions," said Nabil Abdel-Fattah, an analyst at the Al-Ahram Center.

Islamic Jihad's revision comes as the group itself grows into something of an anachronism.

Western governments today are fighting a new era of decentralized, often freelance Islamic fighters -- members of what Gerges called "the Iraq generation" -- who are angered by the U.S. occupation of Iraq and support of Israel.

"Jihad today is no longer a religious idea. It's a political idea, a protest against U.S. activities," said Allam, the retired state security director, sitting on his flower-lined patio next to the Mediterranean, his words accompanied by the crash of waves notorious for their undertow. "The whole world has to do revisions."