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Literally this means a "Islamic societies," but is usually used to describe student groups which were formed at Egyptian universities during the early 1970s. At the time, President Sadat encouraged them because he was hoping that they would help eliminate domination of the campuses by leftist and socialist groups loyal to the previous Nasser regime. The student groups, for their part, desired that their work would lead to the creation of a truly Islamic society by first transforming university life.
Early on, they did do quite a lot of good in helping students. They organized free tutorials which replaced the fee-based tutorials which were administered by professors (and which were vital in supplementing the professors' meager salaries). They also helped alleviate some of the problems which offended the modesty of some female students, like overcrowded public transportation and overcrowded lecture rooms (where two people often had to share the same seat). Their solution was to provide their own gender-segregated buses and demanded the creation of gender-segregated classrooms.
Thus, they demonstrated that social and economic ills could be solved through the proper application of fundamental Islamic principles. Unfortunately, as time went on, they became more aggressive in the pursuit of their goals, and started to use intimidation and violence in an effort to "purify" university campuses.
The showing of "unapproved" films, concerts or other performances was disrupted. Unveiled female students were threatened and sometimes even physically assaulted. Members of non-religious student groups were also threatened, and the leadership of all student groups was gradually taken over by members of the jama'at. In this way, they demonstrated that their goals could be achieved through militant rather than through democratic means.
Eventually, the members of these jama'at became a special target when the government realized that the groups had gotten out of control and began working to suppress fundamentalism. The students at the time saw themselves as the vanguard of a new wave of Islamization of society, and many moved to even more militant groups like al-Jihad. This was not the last time that Islamist groups were used to try to counter communist and socialist organizations, only to have those groups turn around and later attack their original sponsors.
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