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.