According to a September 1, RT Arabic report, the al-Qaeda linked “Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant” issued an Internet statement on August 31 calling on Muslims to wage war on the Egyptian military and criticizing the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafi Nour party for stopping the jihad against the Egyptian state.
Among other things, the statement argued that the Egyptian military is trying to prevent the “rule of Allah” from governing Egypt, and that “peaceful means are no longer an option.”
This statement follows an earlier one from Egyptian-born al-Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri, who asserted that the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt during the popular June 30 Revolution “provides proof that Islamic rule cannot be established through democracy,” calling on Egypt’s Islamists “to abandon the ballot box in favor of armed resistance [i.e., jihad].”