Egypt’s Sisi Calls for Revolution on Radical Islam

January 14, 2015

2 min read

In one of the more unusual speeches given by an Arab leader, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi told local Islamic clerics that Islam has become “a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for humanity” and that “we are in need of a religious revolution”.

The speech was made at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University last week, and a translated version has recently been uploaded to the internet. In the speech Sisi decried how Islam is being projected and perceived by people the world over due to recent Islamic tendencies and rhetoric.

According to the online translation of the speech Sisi said the following to the gathered clerics:

“It’s inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire umma (multinational community of Muslim believers) to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world,” Sisi declaimed. “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 [Muslims] should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants – that is 7 billion – so that they themselves may live? Impossible!…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.”

Sisi’s humanitarian sentiment falls in line with his anti-radical-Islam stance in government. Since he elected President last June,  Al- Sisi has taken a hard line against radical Islam in Egypt. Having previously staged a violent coup as army leader that toppled his controversial predecessor Mohamed Morsi. Morsi was the country’s first elected leader and a member of the radical Muslim Brotherhood. Morsi, like thousands of Muslim Brotherhood supporters is still in prison.

Al-Sisi has also signaled support to the country’s beleaguered Coptic Christian community. He himself has attended Christmas services at Cairo’s Abbasiya Cathedral and declared that Egyptians should not view each other as Christians or Muslims but as Egyptians.

Al-Sisi has also shown to be a supporter of the status quo with Israel, working together with the Jewish State on numerous projects, as well as trying to broker cease fires between Israel and Hamas and peace deals between Israel and the Palestinians.

“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,” said Al-Sisi.

 

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