[1] Part of the organisation's recruitment strategy was to run vacation camps where high school and university students could receive training in protest and propaganda techniques.
It was the first Islamist movement in Morocco to politically weaponise violence, though towards the end of the organization's duration, there was a significant divergence in opinion of the effectiveness of this strategy.
Abdelkrim Motii, a leader of the Shabiba Islamiya, was fingered for the assassination that took place on December 18, 1975, and subsequently fled to Saudi Arabia.
[2] The subsequent investigation of this attack resulted in the disclosure of the armed branch of Shabiba Islamiya, run by law student Abdelaziz Naamani.
[3] When the involvement of Motii and Shabiba Islamiya in the murders had been revealed, authorities called for an intensifaction of arrest campaigns among its members.
[2] The assassinations and subsequent arrests signaled a shift in the organization, causing it to lose its momentum and later many of its followers until its ultimate disbandment.
The discovery of an arms cache near the Algerian border in 1985 resulted in the arrest, trial, and conviction of two dozens of militants, many of whom admitted to being members of Shabiba Islamya.
[2] Due to government suppression, many members of the movement fled to Iran, inspired by the Islamic Revolution, or to Afghanistan, to fight Soviet forces.