Egypt President: “Is it Possible Muslims Should Want to Kill the Rest of the World?”

 http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/dgreenfield/egypt-president-is-it-possible-muslims-should-want-to-kill-the-rest-of-the-world/

January 4, 2015 by Daniel Greenfield 31 Comments

3155

 Print This Post

Morsi specifically picked Al-Sisi because of his supposed Islamist leanings. The former general has since solidified his grip on power beating Obama and the Muslim Brotherhood.

So I’m not sure what to make of this speech. Speeches in the Arab world tend to be more histrionic then we’re used to. And they also tend to mean less. But it does look like the Egyptian president is stepping into some dangerous waters.

“We should closely examine the situation in which we are in. It does not make sense that the thought we sanctify pushes this entire nation to become a source of apprehension, danger, murder and destruction in the entire world,” Sisi said in a Thursday speech before Egypt’s top religious leaders on the occasion of the Birth of Prophet Mohamed.
“I am not saying the religion [itself]. I am saying this thought that has been sanctified; texts and thoughts that have been sanctified for hundreds of years. And disagreeing with [these texts and thoughts] has become very difficult. To the extent that [this thought] makes an enemy of the whole world,” Sisi added.
“You cannot feel what [this thought] is when you are inside it. You have to get out of it, inspect it, and read it with a real enlightened thought. You need to take a strong stance. I am reiterating, we need a religious revolution,” Sisi said in his speech, prompting Al-Azhar scholars to applaud.

Raymond Ibrahim has a more detailed translation.

I am referring here to the religious clerics.   We have to think hard about what we are facing—and I have, in fact, addressed this topic a couple of times before.  It’s inconceivable 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!
That thinking—I am not saying “religion” but “thinking”—that corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the years, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world.  It’s antagonizing the entire world!
Is it possible that 1.6 billion people [Muslims] should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants—that is 7 billion—so that they themselves may live? Impossible!

I am saying these words here at Al Azhar, before this assembly of scholars and ulema—Allah Almighty be witness to your truth on Judgment Day concerning that which I’m talking about now.
All this that I am telling you, you cannot feel it if you remain trapped within this mindset. You need to step outside of yourselves to be able to observe it and reflect on it from a more enlightened perspective.
I say and repeat again that we are in need of a religious revolution. You, imams, are responsible before Allah. The entire world, I say it again, the entire world is waiting for your next move… because this umma is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost—and it is being lost by our own hands.

Al Azhar appears to be endorsing Sisi’s statements. At the very least, Sisi is challenging Salafists.

That’s already dangerous territory. He doesn’t clarify what specifically he’s taking issue with, leaving him plenty of room, but the implication is that he’s calling for a departure from texts that promote international holy wars. Obviously he isn’t taking issue with the Koran. But it appears he is calling for a religious framework that invalidates freelance Islamic expansionism of the ISIS kind. That would be a somewhat conservative step.

Al-Azhar’s newly formed Monitor of Infedilizing Fatwas Dept., which responds to radical Islamists’ fatwas labeling other Muslims apostates, has already issued many articles slamming the “extremist opinions” of “non-specialized” sheikhs that receive the attention of a segment of Muslims.

If nothing else, Sisi would like to further centralize Islamic authority, a major priority in an Islamic country where its own version of ISIS could easily form.

But Sisi pairs his criticism of texts with a call telling Al Azhar’s clergy to take an enlightened perspective and look outside themselves. That is dangerously close to secularism.

“You cannot feel it if you remain trapped within this mindset. You need to step outside of yourselves to be able to observe it and reflect on it from a more enlightened perspective.”

That is extremely close to secularism.

Again it’s important to remember that Arab politicians, are a lot like our own politicians, except more so. The actual agenda may be something else entirely, including centralizing religious power (not necessarily a bad thing either) and there’s no reason to expect Egypt to turn back the clock to an earlier more tolerant era.

Sisi is dealing with religious and political realities that threaten him and his version of Egypt. It would be unrealistic to take his rhetoric at face value. Nevertheless it appears to be bold and shocking. Whether it will mean anything significant is as of yet unclear.

Filed Under: The Point

About Daniel Greenfield

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. He is completing a book on the international challenges America faces in the 21st century.