Egypt witnessed a severe wave of violence and terrorism led by Gamaa Islamiya under former President Hosni Mubarak in the 1990s. These terrorist acts ended when the group’s leaders proposed an initiative in 1997 to put an end to violence and revise its ideology, whereby it announced that it had made a mistake when it called others infidels and targeted the police.

The state welcomed the initiative and released all the group’s members from prison — whose number had reached 12,000 — in addition to all the historical figures of Gamaa Islamiya.

Islamic thinker and former leader in Gamaa Islamiya Nageh Ibrahim led those revisions and organized several lectures in prisons for members of extremist groups.

Al-Monitor spoke to Ibrahim about the possibility of the 1990s scenario repeating itself and whether the extremist groups in the Sinai Peninsula and the Muslim Brotherhood would agree to ideological revisions to stop violence as Gamaa Islamiya did under Mubarak, and whether we should expect further targeting of tourist sites after the Karnak suicide attack June 10 or of foreign embassies after the bombing of the Italian Consulate on July 11. The Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for both attacks.