The Most Famous
EXTREMISTS from Egypt
This page contains a list of the greatest Egyptian Extremists. The pantheon dataset contains 283 Extremists, 4 of which were born in Egypt. This makes Egypt the birth place of the 13th most number of Extremists behind Poland, and Japan.
Top 5
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Egyptian Extremists of all time. This list of famous Egyptian Extremists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.
1. Ayman al-Zawahiri (1951 - 2022)
With an HPI of 69.28, Ayman al-Zawahiri is the most famous Egyptian Extremist. His biography has been translated into 83 different languages on wikipedia.
Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri (Arabic: أيمن محمد ربيع الظواهري, romanized: ʾAyman Muḥammad Rabīʿ aẓ-Ẓawāhirī; 19 June 1951 – 31 July 2022) was an Egyptian-born pan-Islamist militant and physician who served as the second general emir of al-Qaeda from June 2011 until his death in July 2022. He is best known for being one of the main orchestrators of the September 11 attacks. Al-Zawahiri graduated from Cairo University with a degree in medicine and a master's degree in surgery and was a surgeon by profession. He became a leading figure in the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, an Egyptian Islamist organization, and eventually attained the rank of emir. He was imprisoned from 1981 to 1984 for his role in the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. His actions against the Egyptian government, including his planning of the 1995 attack on the Egyptian Embassy in Pakistan, resulted in him being sentenced to death in absentia during the 1999 "Returnees from Albania" trial. A close associate of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, al-Zawahiri held significant sway over the group's operations. He was wanted by the United States and the United Nations, respectively, for his role in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and in the 2002 Bali bombings. He merged the Egyptian Islamic Jihad with al-Qaeda in 2001 and formally became bin Laden's deputy in 2004. He succeeded bin Laden as al-Qaeda's leader after bin Laden's death in 2011. In May 2011, the U.S. announced a $25 million bounty for information leading to his capture. On July 31, 2022, al-Zawahiri was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan.
2. Omar Abdel-Rahman (1938 - 2017)
With an HPI of 56.25, Omar Abdel-Rahman is the 2nd most famous Egyptian Extremist. His biography has been translated into 19 different languages.
Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman (Arabic: عمر عبد الرحمن), (ʾUmar ʾAbd ar-Raḥmān; 3 May 1938 – 18 February 2017), commonly known in the United States as "The Blind Sheikh", was a blind Egyptian Islamist militant who served a life sentence at the Federal Medical Center, Butner near Butner, North Carolina, United States. Formerly a resident of New York City, Abdel-Rahman and nine others were convicted of seditious conspiracy in 1995. His prosecution grew out of investigations of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Abdel-Rahman was the leader of Al-Jama'a al-Islamiyya (also known as "The Islamic Group"), a militant Islamist movement in Egypt that is considered a terrorist organization by the European Union and the Egyptian government. The group was responsible for many acts of violence, including the November 1997 Luxor massacre, in which 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptians were killed.
3. Saif al-Adel (b. 1960)
With an HPI of 53.31, Saif al-Adel is the 3rd most famous Egyptian Extremist. His biography has been translated into 21 different languages.
Mohamed Salah al-Din al-Halim Zaidan (Arabic: محمد صلاح الدين الحليم زيدان; born April 11, 1960 or 1963), commonly known by his nom de guerre Saif al-Adel (Arabic: سيف العدل, lit. 'sword of justice'), is a former Egyptian Army officer and explosives expert who is the de facto leader of al-Qaeda. Al-Adel fought the Soviets as an Afghan Arab before becoming a founding member of the al-Qaeda organization. He is a member of Al-Qaeda's Majlis al-Shura and has headed the organization's military committee since the death of Muhammad Atef in 2001. He is currently known to live in Iran along with several other senior members of the group. Once a colonel in Egypt's El-Sa'ka Forces during the 1980s, the Egyptian military expelled Saif al-Adel in 1987 and arrested him alongside thousands of Islamists amid allegations of attempting to rebuild the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and plans to topple Hosni Mubarak. The charges were dismissed, though Saif soon left Egypt for Afghanistan, joining Afghan Arab mujahideen resisting the Soviet invasion under the banner of al-Qaeda forerunner Maktab al-Khidamat in 1988. Saif would go on to become the chief of newly formed al-Qaeda's media department, and was involved in the production of Osama Bin Laden's videos which quickly found audiences worldwide. By the early nineties, Saif is thought to have then traveled to southern Lebanon with Abu Talha al-Sudani, Saif al-Islam al-Masri, Abu Ja`far al-Masri, and Abu Salim al-Masri, where they trained alongside Hezbollah Al-Hejaz. Sometime after, Saif became a member of the AQ Shura council, and by 1992 had become a member of its military committee, then headed by Muhammad Atef. He has provided military and intelligence training to members of al-Qaeda and Egyptian Islamic Jihad in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Sudan, and to anti-American Somali tribes. Shifting to Khartoum in 1992, Saif taught militant recruits how to handle explosives. It is possible that his trainees included Somalis who participated in the first Battle of Mogadishu in 1993. Saif also established the al-Qaeda training facility at Ras Kamboni in Somalia near the Kenyan border. The 9/11 Commission Report states that in July 2001, three senior AQ Shura council members including al-Adel, Saeed al-Masri and Mahfouz Ould al-Walid opposed Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri's decision to execute the September 11 attacks. Following the subsequent US invasion of Afghanistan, Saif was given secret asylum in Iran during which he was monitored by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). In 2015, al-Qaeda made a deal with the IRGC's Qods Force to return Saif to Afghanistan, though he reportedly refused, stating a preference for maintaining Iran as his base of activities. Saif is currently under indictment in the United States, with charges related to his alleged role in the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya. Before Zawahiri's assassination in 2022, Saif al-Adel had become the effective micro-manager of field commanders of AQ branches in Somalia, Yemen and Syria from his communication base in Iran. A 2023 United Nations report concluded that Saif al-Adel had been named de facto leader of al-Qaeda but that he had not been formally proclaimed as its emir due to "political sensitives" of the Taliban government in acknowledging the killing of Zawahiri in Kabul and the "theological and operational" challenges posed by location of al-Adel in Shia-led Iran. With the death of Zawahiri, Saif al-Adel is one of al-Qaeda's few surviving founding members. Saif has been tightening his grip over the AQ branches, promoting a loyalist base of field commanders and increasing his influence in the group's branch in the Arabian Peninsula, known as AQAP, while waiting to be officially declared emir. Saif has made attempts to shift AQ's central command to Yemen, a country where the group has long had a branch.
4. Mohamed Atta (1968 - 2001)
With an HPI of 50.77, Mohamed Atta is the 4th most famous Egyptian Extremist. His biography has been translated into 36 different languages.
Mohamed Atta (1 September 1968 – 11 September 2001) was an Egyptian terrorist hijacker for al-Qaeda. Ideologically a pan-Islamist, he was the ringleader of the September 11 attacks and served as the hijacker-pilot of American Airlines Flight 11, which he crashed into the North Tower of the original World Trade Center as part of the coordinated suicide attacks. Aged 33, he was the oldest of the 19 hijackers who took part in the mission. Before the attacks, he worked as a construction engineer. Born and raised in Egypt, Atta studied architecture at Cairo University, graduating in 1990, and pursued postgraduate studies in Germany at the Hamburg University of Technology. In Hamburg, Atta became involved with the al-Quds Mosque where he met Marwan al-Shehhi, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and Ziad Jarrah, together forming the Hamburg cell. Atta disappeared from Germany for periods of time, embarking on the hajj in 1995 but also meeting Osama bin Laden and other top al-Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan from late 1999 to early 2000. Atta and the other Hamburg cell members were recruited by bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for a "planes operation" in the United States. Atta returned to Hamburg in February 2000 and began inquiring about flight training in the United States, where he, Jarrah, and al-Shehhi arrived in June to learn how to pilot planes, obtaining instrument ratings in November. Beginning in May 2001, Atta assisted with the arrival of the "muscle" hijackers whose role was to subdue passengers and crew to enable the hijacker-pilots to take over. In July, Atta traveled to Spain to meet with bin al-Shibh to finalize the plot, then in August traveled as a passenger on "surveillance" flights to establish in detail how the attacks could be carried out. On the morning of 11 September 2001, Atta and his team boarded and hijacked American Airlines Flight 11, which Atta crashed into 1 World Trade Center (the North Tower). More than 1,600 people died as a result of the crash, ensuing fire, and subsequent collapse of the tower, making him responsible for the single deadliest air crash of all time, as well as the single deadliest terrorist attack of all time.
5. Abu Ayyub al-Masri (1968 - 2010)
With an HPI of 49.97, Abu Ayyub al-Masri is the 5th most famous Egyptian Extremist. His biography has been translated into 26 different languages.
Abu Ayyub al-Masri ( AH-boo ah-YOOB ahl MAHSS-ree; أَبُو أَيُّوبَ ٱلْمَصْرِيُّ, ʾAbū ʾAyyūb al-Maṣrī, translation: "Father of Ayyub the Egyptian"; 1967 – 18 April 2010), also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir (; أَبُو حَمْزَةَ ٱلْمُهَاجِرِ ʾAbū Ḥamzah al-Muhāǧir, translation: "Father of Hamza the immigrant"), born Abdel Moneim Ezz El-Din Ali Al-Badawi (Arabic: عبد المنعم عز الدين علي البدوي), was an Egyptian militant leader who was the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq during the Iraqi insurgency, following the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in June 2006. He was war minister of the Islamic State of Iraq from 2006 to 2010 and prime minister of the Islamic State of Iraq from 2009 to 2010. He was killed during a raid on his safehouse on 18 April 2010.
People
Pantheon has 5 people classified as Egyptian extremists born between 1938 and 1968. Of these 5, 1 (20.00%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living Egyptian extremists include Saif al-Adel. The most famous deceased Egyptian extremists include Ayman al-Zawahiri, Omar Abdel-Rahman, and Mohamed Atta. As of April 2024, 1 new Egyptian extremists have been added to Pantheon including Saif al-Adel.
Living Egyptian Extremists
Go to all RankingsDeceased Egyptian Extremists
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Ayman al-Zawahiri
1951 - 2022
HPI: 69.28
Omar Abdel-Rahman
1938 - 2017
HPI: 56.25
Mohamed Atta
1968 - 2001
HPI: 50.77
Abu Ayyub al-Masri
1968 - 2010
HPI: 49.97
Newly Added Egyptian Extremists (2024)
Go to all RankingsOverlapping Lives
Which Extremists were alive at the same time? This visualization shows the lifespans of the 4 most globally memorable Extremists since 1700.
