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CAIRO, 2 March 2005 — On the main door is a sign that reads "Only God Rules." The office of Montasser Al-Zayat, the principal attorney for Gamaa Al-Islamiya, an old building in downtown Cairo, is lined with bookshelves of Sayyid Qutb. Montasser's room is slightly different from the rest of the office. His desk is not piled high with files and papers like other Cairo lawyers; he has only a modern laptop and an expensive mobile handset yet to be released in the Egyptian market. Unlike his wild-eyed statements, Al-Zayat is far calmer and gentler than what the press has written about him. He maintained a perfect composure amid dozens of requests and demands from staff hovering nearby while he answered nonstop calls from his clients. He was born in the Aswan Governorate in 1956 to an aristocratic family that believed in the 1952 Revolution and Al-Wafd Party. Until 1973, Al-Zayat was an ordinary young man who wanted to enjoy his adolescence, his college years, find love and become a lawyer. But one day his elder brother asked him to be a true Muslim and quit his previous life. The young man replied that he was a Muslim who prayed and followed the Islamic rules, but his brother explained that the society had lost the Muslim identity, and people had returned to jahiliya (pre-Islamic period). He read many books on jihad including Sayyid Qutb's "Aaqabat Fi Al-Tariq" (Milestones on the Road) that calls for a holy war against the infidel society and the establishment of an Islamic state. "I belonged to a generation that wanted to know the true meaning of piety, so I joined Gamaa Al Islamiya and became an active member." A few years later in the early 1980s, Al-Zayat spent three years in an Egyptian prison with Ayman Zawahiri, a top lieutenant to Osama Bin Laden, on charges related to President Anwar Sadat's 1981 assassination. During his imprisonment and after failing to find a lawyer who could understand his cause, Al-Zayat decided to become a lawyer for himself, sending appeals and petitions to the state. "When I was later released, I decided to quit Gamaa Al-Islamiya and pursue a law career defending other Islamists because I felt that they needed someone to understand them," said Al-Zayat, Egypt's first lawyer for Islamists. "They needed someone who they can trust, not someone who defends them according to his own ideology and interests. Shortly after that, I formed the Islamist Lawyers Group in 1985 that became very significant." Al-Zayat, however, describes his experience mediating between Islamic groups and the government as someone caught between a rock and a hard place. Although the government always brands him as a dangerous fundamentalist, Islamic groups often accuse him of being a government supporter. "I had been often accused of selling and betraying the Islamists' cause and at the same time I was being arrested by the government every now and then." Despite the accusations brought against him by his fellow Islamists, the black-bearded lawyer played an important role in convincing Gamaa Al-Islamiya's leaders to accept the 1997 call for a unilateral cease-fire in Egypt. The obstacle he still faces is that Gamaa believes that it exclusively has the true interpretation of religion, ignoring other voices. The problem, though, does not put him off from continuing to advocate a nonfanatical version of Islam and jihad. Another success for Al-Zayat was when Egyptian authorities allowed Gamaa Al-Islamiya's top leaders to tour prisons and meet with some 30,000 Islamist detainees to convince them of the cease-fire. When the plan worked, thousands of them were released, and prison conditions since have improved for the rest. One of his biggest fears, however, is that the next generation of Gamaa Al-Islamiya will interpret the cease-fire initiative as a tactical maneuver to escape prison. "I'm afraid that they would think that we betrayed the Islamist movement and subsequently resort to violence again. We have to remember that the government is still cracking down on Islamists and is not giving them the freedom they want," he said. Al-Zayat is also disappointed at the failure of the Islamist Unity Project and the weakness of the various Islamist groups in the country. "I'm not very optimistic about the future of Gamaa Al-Islamiya. Since Sept. 11 they have been screaming, condemning and cursing the situation in the Arab world, but they also have not come up with a creative alternative and solution," Al Zayat said. The former de-facto spokesman of Gamaa Al-Islamiya is still keen to document his experiences with people who played significant roles in the formation of the Islamist groups and people who are dubbed now as the world's most notorious terrorists like Al-Zawahri, Aboud Al Zomor, Karam Zohdi and Omar Abdel Rahman. He recently released his eighth book, "Gamaa Al-Islamiya: Roaya Min Al-Dakhal" (Islamist Groups: A View From Within) that gives a detailed history of the Islamist movement over the last 30 years. Al-Zayat who has proven to be a hard-nosed survivor and an old hand in politics is also running for elections at the Egyptian Lawyers' Syndicate so that he can help more lawyers to follow his path. "My biggest dream is still unifying the Gamaa Al-Islamiya and have one Islamic front in the Arab world," says Al-Zayat. "I tried before, but some people's desires exceeded the efforts exerted for this dream." |
