The Exponential Growth of Islamist Jihadists

"Its ultimate mission is to take control of Egyptian resources and create an Islamic caliphate in Egypt, based on Shariah."
"The group also adheres to transnational Salafist ideology that calls for the liberation of Jerusalem from Israeli forces, as well as to fight all targets that represent in the eyes of the group a threat to Islamic values."
"Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis [ABM] usually attacks using improvised explosive devices, often placed in vehicles which are carried by kamikazes. Sometimes ABM has also made use of snipers."
"The group has struck vulnerable tourist targets and detonated explosive deices against pipelines and convoys, has attacked installations and security checkpoints of the police and army, and has several times launched rockets at the Israeli border."
Canadian Security Intelligence Service report

The terrorist group has claimed the February attack on a tourist bus in Sinai. (Photo: AFP)

"Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis is] an offshoot of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood group. The United States is well aware of this fact, but it is unwilling to admit it. [The U.S. decision] confirms that the United States does not plan to list the Muslim Brotherhood among terrorist groups", stated former Muslim Brotherhood leader Tharwat al-Khirbawi at news that the United States had agreed to Egypt's Foreign Ministry's request that ABM be recognized as a terrorist group. And now Canada is following suit.

"This ban is a result of continuous and intensive efforts exerted by the Foreign Ministry and the Egyptian embassies overseas over the last seven months", commented Badr Abdel-Ati, spokesman for the Foreign Ministry.  Which has been attempting to persuade the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries to list the group as a terrorist organization, emphasizing the manner in which international terrorism threatens not only Egypt, but the entire world, and the way to combat these groups is to dry up their funding sources.

The Canadian intelligence report, newly declassified though released in May, describes Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis as "one of the biggest current terrorist threats" to be added to outlawed terrorist entities on Ottawa's list. "We are very well aware of this group and the process with regards to the listing has begun some time ago", referencing the prior designated terrorist listing in the United States and United Kingdom.

It is precisely threats from that source that led the Canadian Government to close down its Cairo embassy last week when Egyptian Military intelligence informed Canada of a threat they were taking very seriously against foreign embassies in Cairo. The government of Australia issued a travel advisory warning that terrorists "may be planning attacks against tourist sites, government ministries and embassies in Cairo". Britain had already closed its Cairo embassy.

Attacks in Egypt against its military and police have been stepped up considerably since the forced removal of former Brotherhood President Mohammed Morsi. Attacks taking place not only in Cairo, but more frequently in the Sinai, where groups associated with al-Qaeda, Bedouin Salafists and Muslim Brotherhood-linked Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have mounted ongoing attacks against Egyptian police.

Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis is credited with an attack on a tourist bus close to the border with Israel that killed three South Koreans. "It was the first attack that directly targeted foreigners", by the group, claimed the CSIS report. An earlier Islamist group in Egypt, Gamaa al-Islamiya massacred 62 vacationers in 1997 at Luxor, with the goal of destroying a part of the Egyptian economy based on tourism that is of huge value to the country. 

While Egyptian security forces have been the targets of such Islamist groups, Israel looms large in the sights of the Islamists and any harm they can mount on Israeli interests or its people is held to be of great benefit to their cause of wold domination. They have simply extended the target range of their attacks to include all foreign interests, since Islamists' agenda is huge on inflicting the pain of slaughter on non-Muslims and Western interests.

And to solidify their credentials as terrorist jihadists Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis last month allied itself to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi the caliph of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Canada's embassy closure appears at the present time to go beyond the temporary shut-down it originally announced. Concerns over the fanatical violence of the Islamist jihadist movement as exemplified by ISIS and its followers reside in the potential for spreading beyond Syria and Iraq to encompass ever greater areas of the Muslim world.

Threatening to sweep onward into the West.