Associated Press
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi made his remarks during a speech celebrating the birth of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad—which was ironically held on January 1, 2015 (a day not acknowledged or celebrated in the Muslim world as it is based on a Christian calendar)—and he was addressing the nation’s top Islamic authorities from among the Awqaf Ministry (religious endowments) and Al Azhar University.
Although el-Sissi’s words were directed to Islam’s guardians and articulators, they indirectly lead to several important lessons for Western observers. However, those observers looking for the "Muslim Martin Luther" bringing a radical Reformation of Islam may be overreaching, so be wary until reading my whole blog here. El-Sissi will not disappoint anyone, but he has his limits too--which still means the sky is the limit.
This is the same person, by the way, who Obama was mad at that toppled Mohamed Morsi, the radical, leftist Muslim Brotherhood President in Cairo and threw them out of power. Whereas, Obama withdrew aid in retaliation in hopes of toppling him; it didn't work. Now Obama just stands by clueless while sucking his thumb watching el-Sissi transform the region instead...Boo-hoo, Obama, Boo-hoo!
First, in just a few words, el-Sissi delivered a dose of truth and hard-hitting reality concerning the Islamic world’s relationship to the rest of the world—a dose of reality very few Western leaders dare think let alone proclaim:
“It’s inconceivable,” he said, “that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire umma [Islamic world] to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible!”
What a refreshingly honest statement to come from not only a political leader but a Muslim political leader who has much to lose, not least his life! --Contrast his very true words with the habitual reassurances of the Western establishment [U.S., France, Germany, England, et. al.] that Islamic world violence and intolerance is a product of anything and everything but Islam.
Even after the appearance of the head-chopping, infidel-crucifying Islamic State, politicians like U.S. President Obama and U.K. Prime Minister Cameron insisted that the “caliphate” is not Islamic, despite all the evidence otherwise. Yet here is el-Sissi, the pious Muslim, saying that the majority of the terrorism plaguing the world today is related to the holy texts of Islam themselves:
That thinking [that is responsible for producing “anxiety, danger, killing and destruction” around the world]—I am not saying “religion” but “thinking”—that corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the centuries, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world. It’s antagonizing the entire world!
Obama, Take Notes: As a Muslim, el-Sissi will not say that Islam, the
Obama is clueless about Islam. “religion,” is responsible for “antagonizing the entire world,” but he certainly goes much further than his Western counterparts when el-Sissi says that this “thinking” is rooted in an Islamic “corpus of texts and ideas” which have become so “sacralized.”
- Recall that here in the West, Islamic terrorists are seen as mere “criminals” and their terrorism as “crimes” without mention of any Islamic text or ideology driving them.
- The Egyptian president further invoked the classical Islamic teaching—the “thinking”—that divides the world into two warring halves: the Muslim world (or in Islamic/Arabic parlance,Dar al-Islam) which must forever be in a struggle with the rest of the world (or Dar al-Harb, the “abode of war”) till, in the Koran’s words, “all religion belongs to Allah” (Koran 8:39).
- “Is it possible,” asked el-Sissi, “that 1.6 billion people should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants—that is 7 billion—so that they themselves may live?”
- el-Sissi made another important point that Western leaders and media habitually lie about: after affirming that Islamic “thinking” is “antagonizing the entire world,” he said that “this ummais being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost—and it is being lost by our own hands.”
In other words, Islamic terrorism and chaos is not a product of grievance, territorial disputes, colonialism, Israel, offensive cartoons, or anything else the West points to. It’s a product of their “own hands.”
Again, one must appreciate how refreshing it is for a top political leader in the heart of the Islamic world to make such candid admissions that his Western counterparts dare not even think let alone speak. And bear in mind, el-Sissi has much to lose as opposed to Western politicians. Calls by the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists that he is an apostate are sure to grow more aggressive now.
NOTE: Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi gets it!...It is to purge the religion of Islam from "extremist ideas" or "Islamism."
To balance your understanding of who, what and how the Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi views and plans will change the Islamic terrorist threats, you must know he is a dictator, a ruler with a standing army offering massive armed support. In this region with an uneducated, illiterate population they're schooled only in the Queran in Madrassas, religious schools, that teach theocratic rule and Sharia laws rather than a democratic form of government. Secular Education with religious tolerance is the key to freedom from tyranny that leads all people to a democratic self-governance; every country needs this national unity if they are to survive.
Please read the Huffington Post's informative article below.
Egypt's President Calls For A 'Revolution' In Islam
The Huffington Post - 01/09/2015
By SARAH EL DEEB and LEE KEATH5
Egypt's president opened the new year with a dramatic call for a "revolution" in Islam to reform interpretations of the faith entrenched for hundreds of years, which he said have made the Muslim world a source of "destruction" and pitted it against the rest of the world.
The speech was Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi's boldest effort yet to position himself as a modernizer of Islam. His professed goal is to purge the religion of extremist ideas of intolerance and violence that fuel groups like al-Qaida and the Islamic State — and that appear to have motivated Wednesday's attack in Paris on a French satirical newspaper that killed 12 people.
But those looking for the "Muslim Martin Luther" bringing a radical Reformation of Islam may be overreaching — and making a false comparison to begin with, El-Sissi is clearly seeking to impose change through the state using government religious institutions like the 1,000-year-old al-Azhar, one of the most eminent centers of Sunni Muslim thought and teaching.
Al-Azhar's vision for change, however, is piecemeal, and conservative, focusing on messaging and outreach but wary of addressing deeper and more controversial issues.
Al-Azhar officials tout a YouTube channel just launched to reach out to the young, mimicking radicals' successful social media outreach to disenfranchised youth. They proudly point out that clerics in the videos wear suits, not al-Azhar's traditional robes and turbans, to be more accessible.
Young people "have a negative image toward this garb," said Mohie Eddin Affifi, an al-Azhar official. "As soon as they see it they don't listen."
In a more ambitious effort, religious school textbooks are under review. Affifi said texts outlining rules for slavery, for instance, have been removed.
It's a problem across the Muslim world: State religious institutions are burdened by stagnation and heavy control by authorities.
For decades, al-Azhar has lost credibility in the eyes of many Muslim youth who see it as mouthpiece of the state rather than an honest interpreter of religion. More appealing to some young men and women searching for identity in a rapidly changing world are calls for a return to the roots of the faith, including from the extremists of al-Qaida and the Islamic State.
In his Jan. 1 speech at al-Azhar addressing Muslim clerics — held to mark the Prophet Muhammad's birthday — el-Sissi called on them to promote a reading of Islamic texts in a "truly enlightened" manner to reconsider concepts "that have been made sacred over hundreds of years."
By such thinking, the Islamic world is "making enemies of the whole world. So 1.6 billion people (in the Muslim world) will kill the entire world of 7 billion? That's impossible ... We need a religious revolution."
Radicals — and el-Sissi's Islamist political opponents who have wide religious followings — angrily denounced el-Sissi, saying he was trying to corrupt the religion. Even secularists, who would normally promote a more modern interpretation of Islam, frowned at el-Sissi's statist approach to such a complicated issue. "A state-approved revolution," questioned Amina Khairi, a columnist in the generally pro-state newspaper al-Watan.
And even state religious officials pushed back against the use of the word "revolution" or the idea of dramatic change.
Affifi, from al-Azhar, told the AP that el-Sissi didn't mean changing texts -- something even el-Sissi quickly made clear in his speech.
"What the president meant is that we need a contemporary reading for religious texts to deal with our contemporary reality," said Affifi, who is secretary general of the Islamic Research Center. The center is an Al-Azhar body responsible for studying Islamic issues and for providing preachers to explain religious affairs to the police, military, schools, government and private companies. It is also responsible for censorship.
He said al-Azhar has already been working for months on such a campaign, following calls for modernizing the faith that el-Sissi has been making since his May presidential election campaign.
Key Point: Committees have been examining textbooks used in the large network of grade schools and universities that al-Azhar runs across Egypt to remove things that have "no place in modern life." Texts on slavery and on refusing to greet Christians and Jews, for example, have been removed.
Key Point: Affifi said positions on issues like slavery, jihad and dealings with non-Muslims were adopted by scholars five centuries ago in a particular historical context. "These were opinions of scholars, these interpretations are not sacred."
Key Point: There is also a push to encourage a nationalism that officials see as moderating religious sentiment. El-Sissi this week attended Christmas services for Egypt's Orthodox Coptic Christians and declared that Egyptians should not view each other as Christians or Muslims but as Egyptians.
The sheik of al-Azhar has launched a campaign in schools and universities promoting the message that "love of nation is part of faith," said Affifi. Al-Azhar also plans to introduce a new Islamic culture course in all of Egypt's universities, Affifi said.
For el-Sissi, the impetus for his modernization campaign is not only the violence wreaked by extremist groups around the Mideast and the world. It's also rooted in his political rivalry with the Muslim Brotherhood. El-Sissi, then head of the military, led the overthrow in July 2013 of an elected president from the Brotherhood, and since then Egypt has cracked down hard on Islamists, with hundreds killed in street clashes and thousands jailed.
To counter Islamists' claims of religiosity, el-Sissi has presented himself throughout his rise as a pious proponent of a moderate, mainstream Islam.
At the same time, his government has shown little tolerance for dissent of any kind. That raises a key problem with the "religion revolution" — state control over religious reform could just stifle it. Al-Azhar has always claimed to be the bastion of "moderate" Islam, but it has moved to silence progressive and liberal re-interpretations just as often as radical ones.
"Any religious modernization will ultimately be against al-Azhar, since it is the conservative fortress in the system," said Amr Ezzat, religion researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. The "authority of religion over modern life and law is what needs to be reviewed. What we need is freedom to have more than one religious discourse to enrich discussion, because as it is pluralism is outlawed."
State control of al-Azhar makes those most vulnerable to militancy least likely to listen.
If the sheik of al-Azhar speaks out against radicalism — as he often does — "no one who is remotely inclined to a violent interpretation will be impressed by that," said H.A. Hellyer, a fellow at the Centre for Middle East policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "They will say: You are just an ally of the state, instead of a genuinely independent figure."
Like Ezzat, he says only independent voices can present a counter-narrative to militant thought. But el-Sissi shows no sign of allowing that, Hellyer said.
His idea for the faith "is something rather docile to the needs of the state rather than independent," Hellyer said.
