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Egypt's
Sisi: Islamic "Thinking" Is "Antagonizing the Entire
World"
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President
Sisi during his New Year's Day speech before Al-Azhar
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Speaking before Al-Azhar and the Awqaf Ministry on New Year's Day,
2015, in connection to Prophet Muhammad's upcoming birthday, Egyptian
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a vocal supporter for a renewed vision of
Islam, made what must be his most forceful and impassioned plea to date
on the subject.
Among other things, Sisi said that the "corpus of [Islamic] texts
and ideas that we have sacralized over the years" are
"antagonizing the entire world"; that it is not "possible
that 1.6 billion people [reference to the world's Muslims] should want to
kill the rest of the world's inhabitants—that is 7 billion—so that they
themselves may live"; and that Egypt (or the Islamic world in its
entirety) "is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being
lost—and it is being lost by our own hands."
The relevant excerpt from Sisi's speech follows (translation by
Michele Antaki):
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 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.
Note: It is unclear if in the last instance of umma Sisi is
referring to Egypt ("the nation") or if he is using it in the
pan-Islamic sense as he did initially to refer to the entire Islamic world.
Raymond
Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom
Center, a Judith Friedman Rosen Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum
and a CBN News contributor. He is the author of Crucified
Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians (2013) and The
Al Qaeda Reader (2007).
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