The Wider Jihadi Network.

When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, this group went there to fight along-side the mujahideen and were then backed by both the US and Saudi Arabia. Now they have small pockets in Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and other GCC countries, Iraq, Afghanistan and in Pakistan's tribal agency of Bajaur. After many arrests in Pakistan and Afghanistan, their numbers now are small, and al-Qaeda has engaged them in its offensive in Afghanistan, so their activities have been significantly reduced.

However, Pakistan's security circles remain on high alert over possible attacks in the country, with top decision-makers, both civilian and military, believed to be in the firing line. There have been similar attacks, including several on Pakistan's military ruler, President Pervez Musharraf, as well as Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and two corps commanders. According to ATO, plots to blow up the offices of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the general headquarters in Rawalpindi were foiled after the arrest of a number of jihadis associated with the Jundullah (God's soldiers) group.

ATO quoted "a top Pakistani security official" as saying that in the past the government could contain the jihadis. This was because most of them had been under the control of the establishment, so tracking them was easy and their leaders were caught or went into hiding. At the same time, the high number of arrests made the jihadi groups sceptical as they suspected each other of being proxies for the intelligence agencies.

Now, though, irrespective of their organisational boundaries, the jihadis have regrouped in the North and South Waziristan tribal agencies on the border with Afghanistan under the spiritual command of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, just waiting for orders to strike (see news12-NeoSalafiPakState-Mar20-06).

A similar situation exists in the Middle East, where al-Qaeda has a base in Iraq and can shuttle between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Unlike in the past when some affiliated groups carried out random attacks, al-Qaeda now has ample time and space to draw up concerted plans to infiltrate Saudi Arabia in its struggle against the al-Saud monarchy.

The three explosions bore the hallmarks of the suicide attacks on the Red Sea coast - at Taba in October 2004 and Sharm el-Shaikh in July 2005 - both of them blamed by the authorities on local Bedouins but which have never been adequately explained. There has been speculation of outside involvement in the attacks but so far no evidence has emerged publicly of any direct link to al-Qaeda. All three attacks took place on or on the eve of important national holidays and appeared designed to inflict maximum damage on the tourism industry of Egypt.

"Clearly the geography, the coastline and the dates show these attacks fall within the same logic", said Dhia' Rashwan, an expert in Islamist groups at the Cairo-based al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies. He said the timing of the separate attacks appeared calculated to humiliate the regime - their location in heavily protected resort towns were meant to expose security failings.

The first of the attacks at Taba brought to an end a seven-year lull in extremist violence in Egypt and caught the regime off guard. Thousands of people were rounded up, detained without charge and in some cases tortured, in the North Sinai town of el-Arish. But since then the authorities have revealed few details of the adversary they face. In an article published earlier in April, the Cairo-based al-Masry al-Youm newspaper said it was only recently that they had begun to understand it. The newspaper published what it described as the account given to interrogators by a member of the group accused of having carried out the Taba and Sharm el-Shaikh bombings and detained last September.

Younes Alyan Abu Greir reportedly told the authorities that the militant group, al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, was set up in north Sinai by a young dentist, Khaled Musa'ed, in 2002. According to the paper, Musa'ed managed to recruit 100 members from the Sinai, and his attempt to find followers had received a boost from the US invasion of Iraq. To evade detection, it is alleged, Musa'ed organised his men in cells whose members often knew no one in the group other than their immediate leader.

Musa'ed was allegedly killed during an exchange of gunfire at a roadblock in the Sinai in September. Abu Greir's account provided details of the group's methods such as their use of safe houses, hideouts in the desert and the thefts they carried out to fund their activities.

Egyptian Interior Ministry authorities on April 18 arrested Islamic militants who it claimed were planning to blow up tourist sites and kill Muslim and Christian religious figures. A statement by the ministry said: "Information, documents and discussions [with the detained men] confirmed that they had studied the execution of operations against tourist sites, and against the natural gas pipeline on the circle road which surrounds Greater Cairo".

The ministry said the 22 men, who called themselves "The Victorious Group", had downloaded information about bomb making from the internet and had contacted foreign militants with the purpose of sending some members to fight abroad. The authorities did not suggest that the men possessed any weapons or explosives. But they said the group had tried to buy a piece of land in al-Saff, 60 km south of Cairo, to use as a training base. The interior ministry statement was accompanied by photographs of all 22 men who range in age from 18 to 31. The leader of the group was identified as Ahmad Muhammad Ali Gabr, a university student.

A Muslim Brotherhood spokesman was on April 18 quoted as saying the announcement of the arrests was a pretext for the extension of the emergency law. The authorities argue that the threat of terrorist attacks makes it necessary to give the security services enhanced powers through the emergency law.

The government managed in the late 1990s to crush the two main Islamic militant organisations which had been active in the country since the assassination of President Sadat. Jihad and al-Gama'a al-Islamiya. Jihad's leader, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, has since become the No. 2 man in al-Qaeda. He is rated at the top ideologue in the Neo-Salafi movement.

After a seven-year period of calm, Neo-Salafi groups apparently inspired by al-Qaeda emerged in Cairo and Sinai. Twelve months ago two bombs planted in Cairo killed four people and wounded several others. The attack on the Red Sea tourist resort of Sharm el-Shaikh in July 2005 killed at least 67 people.

Egypt's Grand Mufti Issues Fatwa - No Sculpture: More than 1,300 years after the Muslim conquest swept through Egypt, one of the country's highest religious authorities has declared that its ancient sculptures are forbidden by Islam. In his fatwa (religious decree) - issued in April, Grand Mufti Ali Gom'a quoted a saying of the Prophet Muhammad that sculptors will be among those receiving the harshest punishment on Judgment Day.

Artists and intellectuals in Cairo say the edict, whose ban on producing and displaying sculptures overturns a century-old fatwa, runs counter to Islam. They worry that Neo-Salafi extremists may use the ruling as a pretense for destroying Egypt's ancient relics, which form a pillar of the country's multibillion-dollar tourism industry. "I was shocked", said art critic Ashraf Ibrahim. "Islam is not against art".

Though Ibrahim acknowledged that in the early days of Islam, the Prophet Muhammad destroyed statues and criticised sculptors in a bid to end idolatry, he said that was no longer necessary, adding: "No one for sure is going to worship a statue now. The reason to forbid statues is finished".

Such disputes are common in Islam, which has no centralised religious authority - no equivalent to, say, the Vatican. The weight and influence of a fatwa has always depended on the stature of the religious man who issued it, and religious men often rule differently on the same matter.

Many Westerners first heard the word fatwa in February 1989 when Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini called on Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie, author of "The Satanic Verses". But most fatwas are simply the opinions of respected Muslim scholars, often on everyday matters. Hundreds, if not thousands, of fatwas are issued in Muslim countries every day, covering topics ranging from the mundane to the deadly serious. They can address questions such as "Is it a religious obligation to see in-laws with whom you do not get along?", as well as "Is it a Muslim obligation to fight foreign invaders?"

Islamic scholar Kamal Abul Magd explained: "In the early days of Islam, [and] up till very recently, anyone who had a specialisation in Islamic law was entitled to express his opinion. People need advice all the time, particularly because Islam has a legal system".

The Egyptian government tried to centralise and control fatwas by creating the position of the grand mufti. In theory, only the mufti and a group of certified religious scholars have the right to issue religious rulings. But in recent years there has been an explosion of fatwa-giving, with many Muslims getting answers to their religious quandaries from phone-in TV shows, 800 numbers, and websites.

The proliferation of opinions causes confusion, says Abul Magd, adding: Fatwas are "getting out of hand. People are feeling unnecessarily guilty and raising more and more trivial questions".

Gom'a's ruling is one of the latest fatwa to stir controversy. Some fatwas have caused contention by weighing in on political affairs - forbidding Muslims to deal with Iraq's Governing Council in 2003-04, for example, or legitimising attacks on US troops in Iraq. Other fatwas have drawn attention for their strangeness - such as the ones forbidding women to wear pants and soccer players to show their legs. In practice, unpopular or impractical fatwas are often not observed.

Egyptian authorities disregarded a fatwa issued by Gom'a's predecessor, Mufti Nasr Farid Wasel, which forbade beauty pageants. If that is any indication, it is unlikely that the myriad tourist shops in downtown Cairo will stop selling reproductions of Pharaonic busts and statues.

Egypt is dotted with millennia worth of Pharaonic antiquities. Muhsen Sa'id, of the country's Supreme Council for Antiquities, says: "We display statues so they can be studied and so people can get to know their heritage. This is Egypt's national heritage. We don't display them for worship". But while artists and intellectuals called Gom'a's ruling against sculptures "ridiculous" and "a return to the dark ages", several prominent sheikhs supported the mufti.

The influential Qatar-based Egyptian religious man, Shaikh Youssef al-Qaradawi, agreed that "Islam prohibits statues and three-dimensional figures of living creatures" and concluded that "the statues of ancient Egyptians are prohibited".

Artists say the ruling stems from a literal reading of religious texts, and worry that it may lead zealots to deface Egypt's national monuments - much like the followers of the Taliban, who in 2001 infamously dynamited to dust two gigantic statues of the Buddha dating back to the 3rd and 5th centuries AD.

Ayman Semary, a sculptor and art professor, questions why Islamic leaders are only now banning such relics. "I laughed when I read the paper" and saw the news of the fatwa, says Semary, adding: "When Islam came to Egypt, [the Muslim invaders] never damaged any Pharaonic statues. How can Ali Gom'a now say that statues are forbidden?" But in downtown Cairo, tourist shop-owner Fathi Ibrahim says: "It's not my role to disagree with the mufti. Anything he says, we must obey".

However, Ibrahim contends that the mufti's fatwa may have been misunderstood, finding it hard to believe that his merchandise is "un-Islamic". After all, he says, "We're not selling statues for people to worship. They're just souvenirs".

As for Semary, he says he will continue working as usual, stressing that he believes in God "very much, maybe more than him [the mufti]... When I do statues, I'm very close to God. I will continue".