Al-Qaeda from Egypt to the Events of 9/11

Al-Qaeda as a terroristic organization went a long path from a group of Muslim prisoners to the most widely known radical Islamist group in the world. This essay traces back the history of Al-Qaeda from its origin to the events of 9/11 and studies the factors and people that contributed to the formation of the group.

The history of Al-Qaeda started in the 1940s with the books written by Sayyid Qutb, in which he covered the topic of Western culture (Wright 14). These were religious books depicting how obsessed Western society was with violence, sex and materialism. Upon his return, Qutb joined the group of the Muslim Brotherhood who were the major players in the Egyptian revolution. The organization was created in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, and it was a political, social and religious movement (Chaliand and Blin 275). They were radical about many of these issues, and by 1948 they had over half a million members.

After Abdel Nasser took control of Egypt, he jailed Qutb in 1954 for criticizing the government. However, he was released ten years later and rearrested again for assassination plot. As a result of the trial, Qutb was hanged together with 6 other members of Muslim Brotherhood. Qutb left his co-members the teachings that they should pray as much as they can, as well as destroy social institutions such as corporations, government, or military. The organization wanted to build a state on the principals of Sharia law. These were the principals that were later used by Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden. They rejected the idea of democracy as there was no need for law and fairness of the social rules because the rules were already written in Quran.

After the murder of the Muslim Brotherhood leader, the group rejected all violent methods and started working with the government. Some of the members did not agree with this policy and formed their own groups to continue opposing the government. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the man behind Bin Laden and one of the founders of future Al-Qaeda, in 1981, participated in the plot to assassinate Anwar Sadat, the President of Egypt who was a highly religious man, but had made the unforgivable mistake of signing a peace treaty with Israel (My Trip to Al-Qaeda).

Zawahiri’s role in the assassination was confined to smuggling weapons. However, he spent three years in prison along with hundreds of other islamists. Because Zawahiri spoke English, he became the group’s spokesperson for the international media who gathered in Cairo to cover the trial. He told about the torture and humiliation that he and others endured. These islamists suffered the severest inhuman treatment: they were kicked, beaten, whipped with electric cables, shocked with electricity and punished with wild dogs (My Trip to Al-Qaeda). Every torture was aimed at breaking the resistance through humiliation, and it often succeeded. Thus, many of men were psychologically destroyed, but Zawahiri was released in 1984 with the desire to revenge (Wright 52). He had not been bloody-minded until then. A military coup was his lifelong ideal. He had no taste for revolution or guerilla warfare. The time spent in prison full of tortures changed that, and the radical thoughts that led to Al-Qaeda were born.

The key to the evolution of Zawahiri’s thinking was that the prisoners were a great debating society. He met there the radicals who were discussing policies. Thus, understanding Egyptian prisons means understanding the derivation of Islamic terror. Four years of such discussions contributed to further radicalization of people that were in the prison. Basically, this is how the history of Jihadist movements in Egypt started.

Human rights workers say that the particular characteristic of Al-Qaeda, which is its thirst for blood, was born in those Egyptian prisons because of the torture (My Trip To Al-Qaeda). Most people when they go through that experience enter as Islamists and go out as Jihadists. Those people embrace contradictory values of the most of the world. Zawahiri and Islamists led a campaign against the Egyptian state in the 1990s, where more than a 1,000 Egyptians as well as dozens of foreign tourists died. In 1993, Zawahiri attempted to kill the Interior Minister using suicide bombers which would become Al-Qaeda’s trademark (Wright 185).

The element that is common for most radical groups in different countries is that they are away from their home (Chaliand and Blin 14). Displacement is not just simply being away from your roots but being marginal in your own culture. It could be seen in England’s subway bombings as the people who did that were British citizens in the third and second generation, and they were already the part of that culture; however, the feeling of being an alien has perpetuated itself through two or three generations. Thus, it is not a clash of civilizations, but rather a clash of identities within a civilization. For these people, Islam becomes not a religion but an identity which makes these alienated young men unite into groups.

Bin Laden had a specific strategy in his attacks on America: he wanted the US to replicate the mistake that the Soviet Union had made in going into Afghanistan in 1979. This event was another important part of Al-Qaeda history. In that assault, with losing much of troops and money, Soviet Union finally stepped back and eventually dissolved (Burke 35). Bin Laden viewed the same possibility for the United States. He was provoking America to attack Muslims in Afghanistan. America did strike back in the aftermath of 9/11 and most of the terrorists’ group were captured or killed, however, the leaders managed to escape but they were scattered all over the world and were unable to communicate.