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Jihad

Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ), also known as Jamaat al-JihadJihad Group, or al-Jihad, is an Egyptian Islamist terrorist group that was founded in Cairo in 1980. The EIJ originated as five or six disparate underground Salafist groups operating in Cairo, each of them with fewer than ten members. Four of the cells, including Ayman al-Zawahiri's (which was one of the largest), merged to form al-Jihad. The group's goals were similar to those of the mainstream Islamists in the Muslim Brotherhood, but they had no intention of trying to work through politics to achieve them. The group was formed in prison after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat, with the Cairo militants evolving into the EIJ and the Upper Egyptian branch evolving into al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya. During the mid-1980s, the group based itself out of Peshawar, Pakistan, and the autocratic al-Zawahiri quickly became its leader. During the 1980s, he began going around to universities, recruiting for jihad, and the EIJ started a terror campaign during the 1990s, attacking foreign tourists and attempting to assassinate government officials. EIJ developed closed links with al-Qaeda, and most of its members were on the al-Qaeda payroll. In 1994, the EIJ was expelled from its bases in Sudan, and its Albanian cell was also eradicated. However, the EIJ continued its terrorist campaign, bombing the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad on 19 November 1995. In June 2001, EIJ merged into al-Qaeda.

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