Intellectual Reviews of Fundamentalist Islamic Groups' Leaders and their Impact on the Jihadi Action, the Muslim world, and the West

After the events of the 11 September 2001 and the advent of the War on Terrorism focused mainly against Al-Qaeda, interest in studying the Islamic groups has increased. Such enquiries can have a huge impact on both the Muslim World as well as the West. In this stressful and hyped political and security environment in the region, intellectual reviews of the doctrinal and practical underpinnings of the activities of the leaders of Islamic Group and the Islamic Jihad Group in Egypt have been published. In the world of Islam, an intellectual review is an open public proclamation by an Islamic cleric of a sound standing. Most of these reviews have concluded that these supposedly Jihadist groups have gone astray. The reviews challenge the hard-line members of these groups and urge them to confess their doctrine is misguided and therefore course correction was in order. The reviews also ask groups' rank and file to apologize to the public through a critical and dispassionate review of their jurisprudence, their wrong political behavior, their belief in legitimacy of violence and murder, and atone for their acts of omission and commission through sincere commitment to the governments and societies. I sincerely believe that an analysis of these intellectual reviews will strengthen our understanding of the nature of the ideas of fundamentalist Islamic groups. This thesis seeks to answer the primary question of what is at the heart of the intellectual reviews of fundamentalist Islamic groups' leaders and what potential impact could these reviews have on the Jihadi Action, the Muslim World, and the West. To answer the primary question, this thesis focuses on four secondary questions: (1) What is the concept of jihad according to famous Islamic scholars? (2) What is the concept of jihad in the Qur'an and Hadith? (3) What is the history of the Egyptian Islamic groups? (4) What are the essential contents of famous intellectual reviews?