[4] In late September 1981 Faraj held a meeting with other al-Jihad leaders to discuss a plot to assassinate Anwar Sadat.

The idea had been proposed to him by Khalid Islambouli, a lieutenant in the Egyptian Army whom Faraj had invited to join al-Jihad when he was posted to Cairo six months before.

[5] Mainstream Salafism argues that Muslims should aim to emulate the practices of Muhammad and his companions and believe that the failure to do so is responsible for the problems facing the Islamic World.

Criticising Salafis, Faraj argued that modern Muslims had specifically neglected jihad, which he placed after the five pillars as the most important aspect of Islam.

[6] He dismissed the notion that inner spiritual struggle was the greater jihad as a fabricated tradition, and emphasised the role of armed combat.

[9] He felt jihad under the banner of an existing Arab nation would simply strengthen that country's impious rulers who were, in any case, responsible for the colonial presence in Muslim lands.

[10] After the assassination of President Sadat the Egyptian police found a document titled Al-Farida al-gha'iba (The Neglected Duty), penned by Abd al-Salam Faraj, which was published serially after its discovery.

In this way victory will be achieved through the hands of the believers by means of God's [intervention].Much of the rest of The Neglected Duty is taken up with discussions concerning Islamically legitimate methods of fighting.

Among these are deceiving the enemy, lying to him, attacking by night (even if it leads to accidentally killing innocents), and felling and burning trees of the infidel.

This surprised some in the Western world who assumed that "Sadat's offense in the eyes of the murderers was making peace with Israel" and would be called a Jewish agent or something similar, rather than a Pharaoh.

There is no doubt that the first battlefield of the jihad is the extirpation of these infidel leaderships and their replacement by a perfect Islamic order, and from this will come the release of our energies.

Jad al-Haq of the al-Azhar University dismissed his declaration of Sadat as an apostate and had misinterpreted parts of the Qur'an, including the sword verse.