Al-Jihad

The Egyptian Islamic Jihad (Arabic: الجهاد الإسلامي المصري‎‎) (EIJ) formerly called simply Islamic Jihad (الجهاد الإسلامي and Liberation Army for Holy Sites) originally referred to as al-Jihad, and then the Jihad Group, or the Jihad Organization, is an Egyptian Islamist terrorist group active since the late 1970s. It is under worldwide embargo by the United Nations as an affiliate of al-Qaeda. It is also banned by several individual governments worldwide. The group is a Proscribed Organisation in the United Kingdom under the Terrorism Act 2000.

The organization's original primary goal was to overthrow the Egyptian Government and replace it with an Islamic state. Later it broadened its aims to include attacking the United States and Israeli interests in Egypt and abroad.

The EIJ has suffered setbacks as a result of numerous arrests of operatives worldwide, most recently in Lebanon and Yemen. In June 2001, al-Qaeda and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (which had been associated with each other for many years) merged into "Qaeda al-Jihad". However, the UN states that there was a split in the organization when the merger was announced.

Following the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, former leaders of the group in Egypt formed a political party, called the Islamic Party, which became a member of the Anti-Coup Alliance following the 2013 Egyptian coup d'etat.

al-Jihad or "Tanzim al-Jihad" was formed in 1980 from the merger of two clusters of Islamist groups: a Cairo branch, under Muhammad abd-al-Salam Faraj, and a Saidi (Upper Egypt) branch under Karam Zuhdi. Faraj wrote the 1980 book al-Faridah al-Ghaiba (The Neglected Obligation), setting forth the standards for EIJ, of which 500 copies were printed.

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