Ideological transformation of Egypt’s largest militant groups

Abstract

This thesis discusses the revisions of the Egyptian Islamic Group and al-Jihād Organisation with a special focus on the theology and ideology of the two movements. The main question is: how could these groups revise their thought using Islamic theological arguments though their previous pro-violence thought was also based on Islamic theological arguments. Textual analysis, coupled with the relevant aspects of framing literature, is the main tool used to discuss the ideology of the two groups and answer the research questions. Yet, the thesis also provided extended literature review of the topic as well as historical sociopolitical and economic accounts of the two organisations in order situate the texts in their proper contexts and link thought to action. The thesis provides detailed description and analysis of the two groups’ ideologies and concludes that one of them has genuinely revised its thought while the other has not. After explaining how this change has happened in theological textual as well as in framing terms, the thesis provides an analysis on why one group could change while the other could not. The thesis shows the level of change in any Jihadist movement thought corresponds with the level of concepts it transfers from the static to the flexible sides of the Sharia, and that the nature and original objectives of each group at the time of its establishment play a great role in any revision process when violence proves counterproductive to the original objectives of that group. The thesis also proves that it is not just the ideas or ideological arguments that matter but also the process through which these ideas and arguments are framed. In addition, the fact that only one of the two groups has genuinely changed while both have undergone the same structural sociopolitical and economic conditions in the same country shows the failure of structural sociopolitical and economic approaches in explaining the reasons of violence and revisions of Islamist movements in causal terms, and illustrates the ability of the textual approach to reveal facts and secrets that other approaches could not