The start of this story is on a muddy mat in the home of a poor watchmaker in southern Egypt, at the end of the 1920s. It continues with the murder of Sadat, and a series of assassinations, the climax of which is the vicious slaughter of Muslims by Muslims in the middle of prayers for the holiday of the sacrifice in a mosque in Egypt, and its end is the most frightening attack in history on the Twin Towers. The end for the time being, that is.

March 1928. The living room in the home of Ahmed El Bana, a watchmaker from the city of Mahmudia, in southern Egypt. His oldest son Hassan, age 22, waited till his parents went to sleep, and in the darkness of night brought in five friends, also called his brother, and said it was time to do something. Already from El Bana's call the friends could guess what awaited them. Even as a child El Bana used to paste Islamic posters on the walls of the houses in the streets of the city, cursed passers by who wore silk clothes or gold bracelets, composed songs and started vocal arguments with anyone who supported rights for women.

They were a group of friends who crowded into the home of the El Bana family every few nights, talked about the situation in the Middle East in light of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, argued about the solution for the ills of Arab society and wept over the sunset of Islam. Now young El Bana, more extreme and more charismatic than the others, decided to move from talking to doing. That same night he swore to live and die on behalf of Islam, he swore in his friends too for a new organization: The Moslem Brotherhood, the first modern fundamentalist movement in Islam. He himself was appointed leader of the organization, under the name "General Director."

Seventy-three years later in a small kindergarten in the Palestinian village Bir Nebala in the West Bank, the teacher appointed by Hamas, Istishar, called after the name of El Bana's daughter, who was born a few hours after he was shot to death, teaches the children to recite the slogan of the Muslim Brotherhood. "Islam is the solution" the little ones shout in rhythm. "Islam is the solution". On a flaking cement wall is spread a large sign, "Kindergarten children are the soldiers of tomorrow", is written there. "They are the martyrs of tomorrow".

The Hamas organization, which grew as a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine, is only one of the arms of the Islamic bond that embraces the world, which began that night in 1928. Like it, hundreds of organizations have spread, not only in the Middle East. Some of them are prominent in an uncompromising armed struggle, some try to distance themselves from violence and long to realize the doctrine of El Bana regarding Islamic revolution through social and popular activities, and sometimes even through becoming integrated in local politics. It is doubtful if El Bana himself would believe that the group he founded at age 22, would be not only Islamic extremist pioneers, but even the incubator of cross border terror organizations, which separated from it or grew out of its inspiration.

When Hassan El Bana founded the Muslim Brotherhood, he established its first outlines. The dream: resurrection of the great Islamic empire. The enemy: The Crusader West, the foreign occupier, and the cultural threat it introduces to Muslim society. The path: mass Islamization through education and information, acts of charity and welfare on behalf of the community. The second stage, after the Muslim Brotherhood would succeed in acquiring the hearts of the masses and gains momentum gradually, El Bana believed, they could start an uncompromising Jihad against the west and eject the occupiers.

Success was swift. In the hall of a large coffee house he rented, Hassan El Bana would bring in thousands of curious people and describe to them, in inflammatory speeches, the horrors of hell expected for heretics. The message was strongly and swiftly internalized. Six years later the Muslim Brotherhood already had fifty branches all over Egypt, with hundreds of thousands of registered activists. They established mosques, schools, sport clubs, factories and a welfare service network, that distributed meals for free to the poor and needy. After ten years there were more than a half million active members registered, in more than two thousand branches. Religious men from Arab countries who were educated in Egyptian universities, exported the good news to their countries. Quickly there shot up branches of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, Sudan, Jordan and in other countries. In Palestine alone, on the eve of the founding of the State of Israel, there were 38 branches.

One of those who became enthusiastic over the teachings of El Bana, was a young promising officer in the Egyptian army by the name of Anwar Sadat, eventually President of Egypt. In his personal diary Sadat wrote about his recollections from the summer of 1940: "One day I invited Hassan El Bana, leader of the Muslim brotherhood, to the army camp where I served, in the Egyptian Communication Corps, so that he might lecture before my soldiers on the various religious topics. A few days before his scheduled appearance it was reported to me from Army Intelligence that his coming was forbidden and canceled by order of the General Headquarters, and I myself was summoned for interrogation. After a short while I went secretly to El Bana's office and participated in a few seminars he organized. I like the man and admired him. Essentially I liked the way he spoke. Hassan El Bana would never try to force his opinion on his fellow man, but the way in which he presented his claims gradually convinced his audiences to support his views."

Sadat, who fell under the spell of El Bana and was convinced of the purity of his intentions, in those days had no idea what was really happening below the surface, in the basements of the mosques of the Muslim Brotherhood. Beside the social activities and recruitment, the Brothers founded the "Secret Apparatus". This was a network of underground cells, who secretly bought weapons, trained fighters, formed underground assassination squads, founded sleeper cells of subversive supporters in the ranks of the army and police and waited for the zero hour.

Egyptian officers stole trucks filled with weapons and ammunition from army camps and transported them to the Brothers. Other officers would come at night to the feet of the pyramids in Cairo in order to train in darkness the youth of the Brothers in tossing hand grenades. It seems the operations were embarrassing at first. The head of the British Intelligence mission in those days, Major Sensum, wrote in his memoirs: "whoever saw the Egyptians in their underground training, as I have, knew that even a high quality hand grenade was likely to explode and cut off a hand." But even the skeptics admitted that these men had a revolutionary flame and endless persistence.

In a dim room, lit only by candles, with one hand on the book of Koran, and the other on a pistol, the new members of the organization would go through the swearing in ceremony. These were adherents from all layers of the population - rich and poor, educated and illiterates. The battle slogan was simple and unequivocal: "Allah is our goal, Mohammed our leader, the Koran our law, Jihad our path, death in the service of Allah our command". But death in the service of Allah wasn't only a slogan. A group of believers who were chosen very carefully were organized even then, according to testimony that was published in the Arab world years later, in units of Fedayun which were designated for special missions, and their training included mental preparation for suicide acts.

When the Second World War broke out, El Bana tried to bring in two new partners: Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. He sent the two letters and emissaries, and called on them to help him in his dual struggle: ejection of the British enemy from Egypt and the downfall of the corrupt regime of King Farouk. The Intelligence Service of the Muslim Brotherhood even vigorously collected information on the heads of the regime in Cairo and on the movements of the British army.

In the years of the war Egypt became a vital holding base for the fighting forces. Britain maintained its bases in the country and sent thousands of additional soldiers there. El Bana was worried. The King's soldiers, he said, are flirting with the girls of Cairo and corrupting them. "Boycott your British friends and their businesses." He shouted. "Leave the clubs where they are members. Don't talk in their language and don't read their books." Tens of thousands believers responded to the boycott.

In 1942, in the middle of the war, the Sixth Congress of the Muslim Brotherhood convened. El Bana, in a surprising appearance, explained that in principle he favors the breakup of all the parties and the establishment of a government of Islamic law, such as would be based on only one party, but on the way to the revolution there is no avoiding making use of the invalid tools of the heretic's regime, and later turn them against it. Therefore he recommended that the Muslim Brotherhood take part for the first time in elections for the Egyptian parliament. The organization's Congress approved the suggestion. But when the desired elections came three years later, the Muslim Brotherhood absorbed a burning failure, as it seems from forgeries on the part of King Farouk's men.

The failure and disappointment gave the signal for starting the organization's armed activity. In 1945 the organization's activists started to initiate riots and demonstrations, to shatter show windows in stores that sold foreign goods, they broke into pro Western newspaper offices and threatened the journalists with murder, demanding they collaborate. After that they started a wave of political assassinations and acts of terror, that flooded Egypt. "When you silence words, the hands begin to move", El Bana explained. Judges were assassinated, ministers were shot, bombs were placed at the entrance to movie theaters, Jewish citizens were attacked. Following the acts of terror then Egyptian Prime Minister Mahmud Nukrashi, outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, in 1948. A short time after than Nukrashi was shot to death by an organization activist.

Emissaries of El Bana were sent to Palestinian villages in order to spread the doctrine of the Muslim Brotherhood and to train groups of youth from the Palestinian youth movement the scouts. Cells of the Brotherhood were founded in those years also among Gaza students who studied in Egypt. With the inspiration of the Brotherhood in Cairo was founded the Palestinian Students Union, whose members included Yasser Arafat, Salim Zanum, and Abu Iyad, eventually heads of the PLO.

But immediately after they forgot the fire of war, the Muslim Brotherhood returned to subversive activities against the regime in Cairo. On February 12 1949, a day of winter sun, in the doorway of the building of the Young Muslim Organization in a market crowded with people in Cairo, Hassan El Bana was murdered from the gunfire of assassins, it would seem by agents of the regime that sought to avenge of death of Nukrashi. He was 43 at his death. Two years later the Muslim Brotherhood was permitted to return to activity under very limited conditions. Their involvement in political activities was completely forbidden.

July 1952. It seemed good news for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. King Farouk was taken down, the "free officers" took over the government and for some time it seemed that a honeymoon would prevail in relations between the establishment and the Muslim Brotherhood. Within less than two years the new rulers discovered with who they were dealing, and they again outlawed the organization. In reaction some activists of the organization tried to assassinate Gamal Abdel Nasser.

On October 27 1954, while President Nasser was speaking at a rally in Alexandria, a young fanatic by the name of Mohammed Abed El Latif fired eight bullets at him. Latif missed. According to the plan, immediately after the firing he was supposed to run towards the President with a belt of explosives, and blow himself up. To Nasser's good fortune, his officers succeeded in firing at El Latif and frustrated the plot. This was a first clue of the pattern of suicide attacks, that would pop up again, thirty years later in southern Lebanon.

Even before the tumult ended, Nasser continued with his speech. "Life is sacred to you and Egypt," he shouted, "the Muslim Brotherhood will never succeed in extinguishing the fire of our revolution. And even if I die many will come in my place". Nasser's rare demonstration of nerve quickly became an uncompromising war. Nasser lost control and decided to place upon the Muslim Brotherhood a fatal axe blow. The oppression steps against the organization were this time unprecedented, the purification campaign was long and protracted. Branches of the Muslim Brotherhood in many cities in Egypt were burned, thousands were arrested, seven of the leaders of the Brothers were sentenced to death.

So began the period of the underground, the period of extremism, the period in which the organization designed its concepts anew, out of the jail cells and dark rooms. The first objective was now redefined: to bring down, first of all, the secular Arab regimes at home, to relate to them as to a heretic enemy for all purposes, and only then to organize for activity against the West. The path: violent and savage terror.

Within the walls of Nasser's jail in those years sat the third leader of the organization, Seid Kutub Ibrahim, the man who had recently become the most prominent source of inspiration for Islamic terror. The books he wrote from the jail cell are also placed today beneath the head pillows of the Islamic prisoners in jail in Israel, in Algeria, in Jordan, in the United States, even in the Philippines. In fact practically everywhere. Kutub's doctrine is to this day a candle at the feet of the Muslim suicides en route to attacks.

Kutub, a native of the Asiot district in southern Egypt, was an Arabic teacher with a rebellious inclination, who succeeded time after time in entangling himself with his superiors, and left the education system in anger on account of extreme differences of ideological thinking. "True social justice can exist only in Islam," Kutub wrote again and again in his books. In 1948 he went to the United States for two and a half years in order to complete a Masters degree in education. Of all things, the years on the Washington-California route, were the ones that formed his revolutionary concepts more than anything.

Until the day he died Kutub did not stop describing the anguish and revulsion that filled him regarding the Americans. It is a shocking mixture of materialism, lust, and egoistical individualism, he wrote later, sale of women and savage racism. "This is the new Crusade," he declared, and claimed that direction of the Americans is part of a methodical plan, the purpose of which is to terminate Islam. On account of all that, Kutub stated, it's necessary to enforce Islamic purity and complete separation. When he returned to Egypt Kutub was appointed as chief editor of the newspaper "the Muslim Brotherhood" and in 1954 was sentenced to 15 years in the Jira jail near Cairo, convicted of involvement in an attempt to bring down the government. Kutub served ten years in jail, was released, but jailed again in 1965 convicted of conspiracy against President Nasser. In his interrogation by the police Kutub was asked "don't you think that the establishment of a Muslim underground can bring about a civil war and bring down such a dreadful holocaust that Islam itself would be destroyed?" Kutub did not hesitate, "it's definitely possible that we will encounter such a civil war," he replied, "but the blame will then fall on whoever forbids the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood and pushes them underground. My obligation is to uphold the commands of our faith."

Based on many quotes from his book "Landmarks" Kutub was sentenced to death. On August 29, 1966 he was executed by hanging, despite the sharp protests and requests for amnesty that Arab leaders and intellectuals from around the world sent on his behalf. He left behind him 24 books. Novels, contemplations, literary criticism and criticism on the Koran. The message at every opportunity was the same, violent and uncompromising: no longer satisfaction in study, preaching, and community activity on behalf of the Islamic revolution, no longer patient waiting for gradual achievements and mass support. The revolution must be executed from top down, through capturing the regime and forcing Islamization on the society. It is necessary to struggle against the secular government in every possible way.

The Muslim Brotherhood reached the 1970s wounded and oppressed. The old men of the organization, those who had succeeded in surviving with great difficulty the wave of executions, the ones who only now have ended a long period of imprisonment accompanied by hard labor, preferred to abandon the way of violence and adopt a more compromising approach. They took pains to stay away from weapons as from fire, and the new President Anwar Sadat, who hoped to be aided by them in his struggle against pro-Soviet streams in Egypt, gave them a free hand and treated them forgivingly.

This was a mistake. The Muslim Brotherhood accumulated increasing influence in the poor urban neighborhoods and universities, and did well to exploit the great disappointment of the Arab public in light of the defeat in the 1967 war with Israel. This embarrassing defeat gave a crushing blow to the supporters of socialism and Nasserism, who promised Arab superiority but actually brought about the expansion of the Israeli occupation and a stinging military failure. Also the oil wealth of the 1970s sharpened the feeling of frustration among the masses, increased the gap between poor and rich and alienation. The mosques sang sermons against the modern way of life "the lewdness and drunkenness.” Sadat and his men they blamed for corruption. Islam was marketed as the power of the future.

Not everyone had patience to wait. In those years the organization did gather support among the lower middle classes and the ranks of the educated, but pushed away many, mainly impatient violent youth who missed the belligerent policy. Many broke off, scattered and set up independent radical cells. These essentially were the first Islamic terror organization whose activities focused solely on armed struggle.

One of ones disappointed in those days was an electrical engineer age 27 by the name of Mohammed Abed Alsalam Faraj, the founder of the Egyptian Jihad organization. Faraj also like El Bana and Kutub, became a model to imitate and a source of inspiration in various corners of the world. So, for example, the branch of the Palestinian Jihad was established by Patki Shakaki according to the example of Faraj and in conformity with his doctrine.

In the beginning, in 1979, Faraj expressed his world view in his underground book The Neglected Duty, which became required reading among Islamic organizations that were founded years later. Faraj printed 500 copies of his book. He distributed only 60 of them, and the rest he burned when he worried they would be discovered by the government. The prophet Mohammed demands the establishment of the Islamic state and the return of the Caliphate, Faraj stated in his book, and therefore it is an obligation for every Muslim to act on behalf of attaining this goal, on behalf of the establishment of the Islamic state. Like Kutub, Faraj also stated that the coming war against the enemy, the heretic regimes, precedes the war on the distant enemy. When true Muslim leaders take over the government, wrote Faraj, the way will be opened to a war for liberating Jerusalem.

In the summer of 1980 Faraj started to spread his teaching in mosques near where he lived. At the end of every lecture he would wait for enthusiastic youth who gathered around him and mobilize them for Jihad. One of these youths introduced Faraj to his cousin, a Colonel in Egyptian military intelligence by the name of Obud El Zumur, and within a short time he became the head of organization's military arm. When March 1981 arrived, Zumur's operational plan was already crystallized. Activists of the organization crowded in for a dramatic meeting in a back room of a small mosque in Cairo in order to hear the plan. Among those in the crowd was also Iman Zawahari, a medical student age 26, soon to be the right hand of Osama Bin Laden and who has been declared today as one of the central suspects in planning the attacks in New York and Washington.

Zumur spoke. The purpose of the plan: taking down the Egyptian government. The method: a series of coordinated assassinations against the defense minister, interior minister, foreign minister, central security officer and the heads of the left wing parties. In parallel with overtaking the buildings of the defense ministry, television and radio, headquarters of the internal security forces and interior ministry. At the first stage a complete takeover of the Asiot district in the south of the country, which is considered a fortress of extreme Islam. And establishing a fundamentalist regime separate and independent in this district. Likewise in this fragile and difficult moment for the regime, flaming giant riots of citizens all over the republic, such as will create a popular revolution. Zumur even offered to train groups of citizens in taking over strategic targets and assassinations. The founder, Abed El Salem Faraj accepted the suggested plan, except for one detail: he demanded that at the head of the list of assassinations appear the name of the President Anwar Sadat himself. The plan went ahead.

Karem Zahari, one of Faraj's partners and a leader of the terror organization Elgama El Islamiah in the Elmania district in Egypt, told his interrogators how in the Spring of 1981 he escaped from jail and met with Faraj in Cairo: "from the words of Abed Elsalama Faraj I understood that he is obligated to the idea of Jihad. There was a deep spiritual bond between us, and we agreed to found a secret Muslim organization, that would be spread all over Egypt, for the purpose of bringing down the regime and establishing an Islamic state. We planned to do this by means of assassinating the President of the republic and prominent political figures. Likewise we planned to take over the operations room of the defense ministry.”

Meanwhile Faraj received the blessing of the blind sheikh Omar Abed Elrahman, who one day would be the spiritual leader of Egyptian terror organizations. Today the sheikh is jailed in the US convicted of involvement in the first bombing of the twin towers in New York in 1993. We are happy and proud to be terrorists," the sheikh used to say in his speeches in mosques. "We must be terrorists and use terror against the enemies of Islam, to frighten them, to interfere with them, to shake the ground under their feet." He screamed like that in the 1980s, and also shouted like that in his sermon the high school in New Jersey in 1993. When Faraj's plans were ready, in the summer of 1981, in Egyptian intelligence they started to sense streams of something happening beneath the surface. When a worrisome picture of the situation started to form, the heads of intelligence urged Sadat to issue an all inclusive arrest order against more than 1500 fundamentalist activists. A month before his death Sadat issued the order. The central activists in Jihad, who were worried about searches in their homes, hastened to get rid of documents in their possession and to hide their weapons in distant places. Atzam Elkamedi, a Major in the Egyptian armor corps and one of the dominant figures in the organization concentrated the weapons that were in possession of his men in large boxes and sent them to his friend, the student Zawahari. Zawahari hid them in his house.

Three weeks afterwards was the zero hour. In the middle of a military parade to mark the victory over Israel in the 1973 war Sadat was murdered by activists of the Egyptian Jihad, who stormed the stage of honor between the lines of soldiers, opened long blasts of fire and threw grenades. The Jihad activists were not satisfied with that and they were determined to create a chain reaction that would bring down the government.

Three days after the assassination began the second stage of the operation. Some activists entered a mosque in Asiot and started to strafe the place, for the purpose of murdering 120 soldiers who were praying there at that time. This was the prayer for the holiday of the sacrifice, the most sacred holiday to Muslims, but the Jihad fighters did not hesitate to exploit this and slaughter their brothers, while they were kneeling in prayer without their weapons.

A few minutes afterwards, the walkie-talkies reported a coordinated attack: 84 of the rebels stormed the headquarters of central security, the headquarters of the secret police, occupied police stations, murdered policemen on patrol. The mosques did not stop sounding out extreme speeches against Sadat and his successor, who had surrendered to Zionism and Imperialism. 90 men of the security forces were killed in that attack. 200 others were wounded. Egyptian commando forces were flown into Asiot and with great difficulty after long days of exchanging fire, succeeded in frustrating the occupation of the district by the rebels.

When the fire died down thousands of Islamic activists were arrested. Sadat`s murderers, among them Faraj himself, were executed. Others were jailed. Among the most minor prisoners was young Iman Zawahari, who was released three years later. Twenty years later, when he carries passports from Egypt, France, Switzerland and Holland, and holds the title "leader of the Egyptian Jihad,” Zawahari stars at the head of the list of fugitives of Egypt and also holds an honored place on the list of fugitives of the CIA.

Zawahari and many of his old friends, graduates of the events of 1981, those who succeeded in surviving Egyptian jail , those who fled from Egypt or were ejected from it, represent today the central nucleus of the El Qaida organization, the great reservoir of mercenaries of Osama bin Laden. Beside Islamic terror organizations from Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Tajekistan, Bosnia, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Chechenya, Libya, Pakistan, the Philippines and Eritrea, the Egyptian terror organizations take a central place in the list of members in the terror parliament that Bin Laden founded under the name "Islamic Front for War Against Jews and Crusaders." According to the investigation of the FBI, most of the plane hijackers in the attack on the twin towers and Pentagon on September 11 belonged to the Egyptian Jihad.

"Mubarak knows them better than everyone," says a senior figure in NATO, "he was there when they fired at Sadat, he saw them slaughter with their own hands hundreds of Egyptian policemen at the beginning of the 1990s. He saw them cross every time anew the borders of sophistication. He knows for years already with whom he is dealing. For a decade, Mubarak is warning that these savage beasts will also catch the western countries with their pants down, tries to convince that the Jihad, the Jemah Al Aslamiya, and the "Front" of Bin Laden are not only his private trouble. Already for a decade he is trying to ask the countries of Europe to help him in his intelligence struggle against these movements, and they are evasive. The Europeans even grant political shelter in recent years to some of the senior figures in these terror organizations. They are a real incubator for them."

At the end of 73 years of modern Islamic fundamentalism, practically no one in the West knows the name of Hassan El Bana. Also Kutub and Faraj, instruments of the new Islamic radicalism, do not merit a high rating there. Even in history books this triumvirate does not merit the respect it deserves. But unlike the other leaders of murderous ideological movements in the twentieth century like Hitler, and Stalin, the movement that El Bana founded and his successors made more extreme is still alive and kicking. Around the Arab world, in Muslim communities in the Western world, in Bosnia, Afghanistan, Algeria, among Israeli Arabs, Islamic Fundamentalism does not show signs of weakening. It is very possible that its great days are still ahead.