The Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ; Arabic: الجهاد الإسلامي المصري), formerly called simply Islamic Jihad (Arabic: الجهاد الإسلامي) and the Liberation Army for Holy Sites, originally referred to as al-Jihad, and then the Jihad Group, or the Jihad Organization, was an Egyptian Islamist group active from the late 1970s until its 2001 merger with Al-Qaeda. It was long considered an affiliate of Al-Qaeda and under worldwide embargo by the United Nations. It was also banned by several individual governments worldwide. The group is a proscribed terrorist group organization in the United Kingdom under the Terrorism Act 2000.
The organization's original primary goal was to overthrow the Egyptian government and replace it with an Islamic state. Later it broadened its aims to include attacking American and Israeli interests in Egypt and abroad. Since September 1999 the leadership of the group has also allied itself to the ‘global Jihad’ ideology expounded by Osama Bin Laden that has threatened Western interests.
