Egypt: Islamic Jihad Militants Call on Muslims to Tolerate Coptic Christians

May 13, 2011
By johnthomas didymus

Aboud el-Zomour, ex-army officer and former leader of the Islamic Jihad who had been in prison for 30 years over his role in the assassination of the former President Anwar Sadat seems to have turned over a new leaf. He told a crowd of Muslims gathered outside a mosque in central Assyut that the Islamic Jihad has "turned the page of violence, forever and with no return," and urged the Muslim crowd at the rally to espouse tolerance for the Egyptian Copts. The group Islamic Jihad had been involved in the assassination of Anwar Sadat in the 1970s because he signed a peace treaty with Israel.

Both the Islamic Jihad and another group Gamaa Islamiyah were formed after the The Muslim Brotherhood renounced violence in the 1970s. The Islamic Jihad later failed in its attempt to assassinate the President Hosni Mubarak who, after escaping assassination attempt, came down heavily on militant Islamic groups, imprisoning and killing thousands of Islamic militants in Egypt. Aboud el-Zomour was imprisoned in 1981.

Al-Zamour was released by the military government in March after the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. In a televised broadcast, he apologized to Egyptians for helping to usher in the Hosni Mubarak era by assassination of Anwar Sadat. He statement was not an apology for the assassination of Anwar Sadat as much as it was an apology for the fact that it helped to usher in the Hosni Mubarak era.

Both the Islamic Jihad and Gamaa Islamiyah appear anxious to be seen as Islamic parties willing to participate peacefully in the transition to the civil rule in post-Mubarak Egypt. Yet, strangely enough, a banner of Osama bin Laden was openly displayed in the rally, an action the leader of Gamaa Islamiyah, Mohamed Essam el din Derbala explains as "coincidence of timing." According to Derbala, Gamaa Islamiyah does not support Osama bin Laden's methods but he is, all the same, a hero to be honored for his role in defending Islam against both Soviet and American imperialists in Afghanistan.

Leaders of the Coptic Christian community are, however, taking El-Zomour's apparent transformation with caution, adopting a wait-and-see attitude, explaining that his change would be proven by his actions in time.

Source: God Discussion.
Link: http://www.goddiscussion.com/62533/egypt-islamic-jihad-militants-call-on-muslims-to-tolerate-coptic-christians/.