Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenge and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet's Legacy

by Jonathan A.C. Brown

Arrested by Egypt’s security forces and often brutalized in prison, leading members of one Islamist group in particular, the Jama‘a Islamiyya, turned back to the writings of Sayyid Qutb with a new perspective. His characterization of Egypt’s government as a resurrection of pre-Islamic paganism rang prophetically when prison interrogators tortured the young activists for what the victims could only assume was their sincere faith in Islam. When prisoners called out to God during torture, the guards mocked them with barbs like, ‘Bring your God and we’ll put him in a cell too.’ The Jama‘a activists concluded that they were indeed facing pure enemies of God just as the Prophet had.23 They and other Islamist groups turned to violence against the infidel state. The Jama‘a Islamiyya and another small cadre called the Jama‘t Jihad cooperated in assassinating Sadat and a failed uprising against the government in Upper Egypt in 1981. Locked in a destructive tit-for-tat with the Egyptian security services, through the late 1990s Jama‘a Islamiyya militants carried out sporadic and horrific attacks on state interests and tourist sites.