CAIRO — Recent days have witnessed a new cycle of conflict pitting the Muslim Brotherhood against Gamaa Islamiya. The latter was the Brotherhood’s foremost ally following its fall from power on July 3, 2013. Yet Ibrahim Munir, the Brotherhood’s deputy supreme guide, accused Gamaa Islamiya of responsibility for the violence that broke out during the period of former President Hosni Mubarak’s rule. His accusation drove Abboud el-Zumar, a prominent leader and member of the Gamaa Islamiya’s Shura Council, to demand that ties between the two groups be frozen.
Gamaa Islamiya was not just another member of the National Alliance to Support Legitimacy, which was founded in 2013 following the Brotherhood’s ouster. It was the alliance’s largest partner after the Brotherhood and participated in protests and sit-ins across Egypt’s various squares. It paid much in the blood of its members to defend the Brotherhood.
To fully understand the extent of the current conflict between Gamaa Islamiya and the Brotherhood and the degree to which it has impacted the National Alliance to Support Legitimacy, as well as the much-discussed potential reconciliation between the Islamist movement and the state, Al-Monitor held a wide-ranging interview with Zumar, a prominent leader in Gamaa Islamiya considered not only one of its most important figures but its mastermind. He was an officer in Egypt's military intelligence before being imprisoned in 1981 on charges of assassinating former President Anwar Sadat. He was subsequently released from prison in 2011, following the January 25 Revolution, after becoming the oldest political prisoner in Egypt.
In the course of his interview with Al-Monitor, Zumar addressed many topics, foremost among them the issue of reconciliation with the state. He stressed Gamaa Islamiya’s support for the notion of a comprehensive reconciliation with the state to end the state of perpetual conflict, and the belief that the nation is in need of someone to lead it out of its ordeal. He also expressed his view that the fall of the state at the present time would lead to destruction and chaos.
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