Islam and Terrorism by Mark A Gabriel Page B

military training institute in Cairo, hoping to establish a base from which to overturn the government.
    The Egyptian authorities responded with great force and arrested him and all the members of his movement. In October 1975 the federal government of Egypt sentenced Dr. Serea and many of his followers to death; twenty-nine followers of the movement remained in prison.
    Egypt and the Islamic world were just entering a newepisode of terrorism and radical Islamic groups. Even before Dr. Serea was sentenced, a new radical group was birthed in Egypt.
S HOKRI M OUSTAFA
    Al-Takfir wal-Hijra (Repentance and Holy Flight) was the next militant group to carry on the goals of Dr. Serea. Its founder was Shokri Ahmad Moustafa, who was from the same region of Egypt as Sayyid Qutb. Born in 1942 Shokri Moustafa was only twenty-four years old when Qutb, the father of modern jihad, was hanged. He was thirty-three years of age when Dr. Serea was sentenced to death.

    (Courtesy of Shorouk International, Cairo, Egypt)
    Shokri Moustafa, put to death by the Egyptian government in 1977 for jihad activity.
    Shokri Moustafa was clear on what his goals and priorities were. The following is what he stated before the Egyptian federal court in the session on November 7, 1977:
My greatest priority, for which I am willing to pay whatever price is required to accomplish it, is to see a true Islamic movement take off. I must find fertile ground to plant a great Islamic nation worldwide. I will revive Islam and bring it to its original state.
    The danger that the Egyptian court faced with Moustafa was that he had a large number of members in his organization who would obey him at a moment’s notice. Moustafa said:
Each member of our movement would be willing to sacrifice his own life to fulfill the responsibility that Allah has put on our shoulders. That responsibility is to spread the message of Islam across the earth and reinforce it with the sword. My group of people will fight with me to the end to accomplish the great mission.
    Shokri Moustafa kept a journal of poems in his own handwriting that the court used in his conviction. (Poetry is deeply ingrained in Islamic culture.) In Moustafa’s most popular journal The Battle (El-Maalhamma) we find the poem “Before the Flood,” which was written in 1967. In it Moustafa expressed his deep sorrow and frustration with the current Muslim existence. He told himself that he must prepare for the calling on his life and his mission, and in doing so he should prepare to meet Allah.
    In another poem titled “Immigration” (“ El-Hejhera ”) we see his belief that everything on this earth is vanity and that he simply wants to accomplish his mission and leave this earth.
    In another journal titled Expectation (El-Tawaseemat) he asked, “Where is the mother of the villages?” This iswhat Mecca was called during the time of Islam. Mecca is the city where Muhammad was persecuted, so it is considered evil for doing that. Moustafa was saying that Egypt was the modern Mecca, the modern persecutor of Islam. He called Egypt the place that imports evil, blasphemy, and error. “It is the country of infidels,” he wrote.
    Moustafa comforted himself by saying, “Just as Muhammad left Mecca and immigrated to Medina to establish the first Islamic nation, I too will mentally escape from Mecca to go to my Medina to begin again.”
    From Egypt Moustafa planned to start an Islamic nation that would go all over the world. First he planned on winning many people from his home country, which would be the foundation for building a worldwide Islamic nation. From this new foundation he would export Islam to the world.
    One of Moustafa’s most disturbing beliefs was that his quest to spread Islam would involve great tension between the East and the West, which would lead to a worldwide nuclear war. 4 He believed that most of the world would be destroyed during this war, but his followers would not be killed because they would hide