Once-armed Islamists talk tolerance by Egyptian temple
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(Mosque (R) in part of Luxor temple/Amr Abdallah Dalsh)
The Egyptian Islamist group al-Gama’a al-Islamiya preached non-violence and tolerance of tourism this week outside a pharaonic temple close to the Luxor site where its members massacred 58 foreigners in 1997.
The group which took up arms against the state in the 1990s and played in a role in Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981, gathered followers by the Luxor Temple on Friday to espouse the peaceful activism it is pursuing in the post-Hosni Mubarak era.
The organisers had picked the location, by a mosque in the Luxor Temple complex, as a message to tourists “that there is no danger to their presence in Egypt”, Sheikh Assem Abdel-Maged, one of the group’s leaders, said in a telephone interview. “Some tourists attended the meeting and took photos and there were some meetings with tourists,” he said on Saturday.
The Gama’a al-Islamiya is one of the Islamist groups that has emerged from the shadows since Mubarak was ousted from power on Feb. 11, trying to re-establish itself in the new era. Mubarak suppressed Islamists whom he saw as a threat.
via Once-armed Islamists talk tolerance by Egypt temple | News by Country | Reuters.
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Viewed with considerable skepticism given all that goes on the world based in fundamentalist and extreme Islam, and based on many many years of history …