Beyond Jihad: the New Thought of the Gamāʿa Islāmiyya

The last few decades have led to a veritable global conflation between "Islamic movement" and violence. Unnoticed in all of this has been an ideological evolution within certain Islamist circles themselves. One such instance is that of the notorious Gamâʿa Islâmiyya of Egypt, which in 1997 began a campaign not only to renounce political violence per se but to declare such violence to be Islamically improper and to present an Islamically reasoned argument to this effect. This article traces this evolution in the Gamâʿa's thinking and exams key aspects of its new ideological stand, including its critique of contemporary jihadism overall, not least of which the ideological outlook of al-Qâʿida