At Foreign Policy‘s blog, Marc Lynch notes that a senior Islamist from Egyptian al-Gama’a al-Islamiya (the Egyptian Islamic Group) is calling for a four-month truce between al Qaeda and the United States “to test Barack Obama’s pledges to establish a new relationship with the Islamic world and to close Guantanamo.” Lynch then properly notes that while the call for a truce within Islamist circles is interesting, it wont amount to anything from al Qaeda’s side as previous denunciations of al Qaeda for their tactics, such as a book written by Sayyid Imam al Sharif, the found of the Egyptian Islamic Group who is better known as Dr. Fadl, have been ridiculed by al Qaeda.
It should be noted that the Egyptian Islamic Group split in November of 2006 after Mohammad Khalil Hasan al Hakaymah, who was better known as Abu Jihad al Masri, appeared on a videotape with Ayman al Zawahiri and announced the merger with al Qaeda. The Egyptian Islamic Group split largely along the lines of those inside Egypt and those outside of Egypt. Abu Jihad al Masri took control of the “external” wing, while the Egyptian wing denounced the merger. He became a senior leader within al Qaeda and earned a seat on al Qaeda’s top council. He was killed two years later in a U.S. Predator strike on a safe house in North Waziristan in November 2008. These fissures between Islamist groups are interesting because they force al Qaeda to defend its tactics and strategy, weaken al Qaeda’s message in the Islamic world, and give intelligence agencies an opportunity to exploit these weaknesses. But by no means should policymakers succumb to the illusion that those denouncing al Qaeda are in any way allies of the civilized world. These are internal disputes among the Islamists over tactics and strategy.
