Jan. 28, 2015

WASHINGTON – It’s been four weeks since Egyptian President Abdel al-Fattah delivered his fiery speech to Islamic clerics at Al-Azhar University calling for a “revolution” in the faith to change its reputation as a violent religion at war with the world. What’s been the reaction in the Muslim world since? Deafening silence.

A request by WND for reaction from Muslim organizations in the United States, including the Islamic Society of North America and the Muslim Student Association, was met with nearly total silence. In the case of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, the spokesman hung up when asked for comment.

An exception was Stephen Suleyman Schwartz, executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism, a Sufi Muslim leader know for his criticism of fundamentalist Islam, including the Wahabbi stream of Islam promoted by Saudi Arabia, which is highly influential among U.S. Muslim groups.

Schwartz prefaced his comment saying that he was speaking only for himself.

“I consider el-Sisi’s rhetoric about Islamic reform to be problematical,” Schwartz said. “I do not think a military ruler can effect changes in Islamic thought.

“I am for the separation of the state from religious life, and as an example of that believe el-Sisi should stay out of religious affairs,” he said. “Let him reform the Egyptian state budget, the economy, the educational system and the judiciary.”

Schwartz said Sisi “is a dictator and so perceived even by some neoconservatives in the West.”

“He cannot impose changes in religion.”

The Dar al-Iftaa, an Egyptian government-sponsored religious institution responsible for issuing fatwas and religious opinions under the direction of Sisi, said it would seek to achieve the “highest degree of effective communication” with Muslims.

The group plans a national project aimed at correcting the image of Islam through social media, foreign visits, publications and the issuance of fatwas.

Dar al-Iftaa noted its Facebook page had garnered 1.1 million “likes.”

To press Sisi’s call, Dar al-Iftaa said it had launched an international campaign to introduce the “mercy” of the character of Islam’s founder, Muhammad.

It has hosted an interfaith conference to fight extremism, attended by 700 Islamic and Christian scholars from 120 countries. It said it also has issued several publications rebutting the ideology of ISIS, especially regarding slavery and the treatment of women.

Skepticism

Western reaction, however, was more positive to Sisi’s dramatic call for a revolution to change world attitudes toward the Muslim faith, which the Egyptian president described as “a source of apprehension, danger, murder and destruction in the entire world.”

At the same time, there was skepticism that the Muslim world indeed would rally to Sisi’s appeal, including from Middle East expert Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum.

“Until we know more about Sisi’s personal views and see what he does next,” Pipes said, “I understand his speech not as a stance against all of Islamism but only against its specifically violent form, the kind that is ravaging Nigeria, Somalia, Syria-Iraq and Pakistan; the kind that has placed such cities as Boston, Ottawa, Sydney and Paris under siege.”

The Egyptian president has restored the practice of previous military regimes in Egypt of showing greater religious tolerance. On the Orthodox Christmas Day on Jan. 6, Sisi attended St. Mark’s Cathedral to speak to the congregation.

The reception by the Coptic congregation, numbering in the hundreds, to Sisi’s good wishes to the Christian minority was described as “jubilant.”

“Egypt has brought a humanistic and civilizing message to the world for millennia, and we are here today to confirm that we are capable of doing so again,” Sisi said.

“Yes, a humanistic and civilizing message should once more emanate from Egypt. This is why we must not call ourselves anything other than ‘Egyptians,’” he said.

“This is what we must be – Egyptians, just Egyptians, Egyptians indeed!” Sisi told the Christians. “I just want to tell you that – Allah willing, Allah willing – we shall build our nation together, accommodate each other, make room for each other, and we shall like each other – love each other, love each other in earnest, so that people may see. … So let me tell you once again, Happy New Year, Happy New Year to you all, Happy New Year to all Egyptians!”

Sisi’s New Year’s Day remarks, which didn’t receive much establishment media attention, were nevertheless hailed in the West as an enlightenment, with suggestions that the Egyptian president who forcibly overthrew Muslim Brotherhood-backed President Mohamed Morsi two years ago should receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Sisi’s action against the militant Muslim Brotherhood received the backing of Saudi Arabia but the condemnation of Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Now Turkey’s president, Erdogan offered the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas safe haven in Ankara and has shown support for ISIS.

Saudi support of Sisi reflected a regional competition of whether Egypt or Turkey would represent the more “moderate” voice of Islam in the region. The Saudi decision, however, wasn’t difficult, since the kingdom had helped finance Sisi’s overthrow of Morsi.

The Saudis look on Turkey as a threat not only for Erdogan’s more Islamist approach and backing of the Muslim Brotherhood but what they see as a Turkish effort to establish a neo-Ottoman caliphate, which the Saudis historically condemn, having lived under the old Ottoman empire.

‘Take responsibility’

Sisi urged the imams take responsibility to change the world’s outlook on Islam.

“I am referring here to the religious clerics. … It’s “inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire ummah (Islamic community) to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of world. Impossible!” Sisi said.

“That thinking – 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! … 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,” the Egyptian president said.

“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 ummah is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost – and it is being lost by our own hands.”

Pipes said that no matter “how fine” Sisi’s ideas are, “no politician – and especially no strongman – has moved modern Islam.”

He said that reforms brought about by modern Turkey’s first president, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, have been reversed, just as King Abdullah of Jordan and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf had given similarly “fine speeches” on “the true voice of Islam” and “enlightened moderation” that “immediately disappeared from view.”

“Yes, Sisi’s comments are stronger, but he is not a religious authority and, in all likelihood, they too will disappear without a trace,” Pipes said.

Pipes noted Sisi gave no specifics regarding the revolution he seeks, but he believes that the Egyptian president is look more for a “subtle version of Islamism.”

He said there are “several indications” that point to Sisi being an Islamist.

In one instance, Pipes said the Muslim Brotherhood president, Morsi, even appointed Sisi as his defense minister, “precisely because he saw the then-general as an ally.”

‘Forceful and impassioned’

While Pipe’s reaction has been a wait-and-see approach to Sisi, Raymond Ibrahim, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and associate director of the Middle East Forum, called Sisi’s speech “a vocal supporter for a renewed vision of Islam” and made “what must be his most forceful and impassioned plea to date.”

“Although Sisi’s words were directed to Islam’s guardians and articulators, they indirectly lead to several important lessons for Western observers, Ibrahim said.

“First, in just a few words, Sisi 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,” Ibrahim said.

“As a Muslim, Sisi will not say that Islam, the ‘religion,’ is responsible for ‘antagonizing the entire world,’” Ibrahim added, “but he certainly goes much further than his Western counterparts when he says that this ‘thinking’ is rooted in an Islamic ‘corpus of texts and ideas’ which have become so ‘sacralized.’”

Martin Sherman of the Jerusalem Post said that it is difficult to overstate the potential importance of Sisi’s speech on Islam “and equally important to avoid overly optimistic expectations as to its practical impact.”

Echoing Pipe’s observations, Sherman said that the venue of Sisi’s speech was where President Obama made his 2009 “outreach dpeech” to the Muslim World.

“But the contrast between the two could hardly be more striking,” he said. “As one U.S. analyst deftly noted: ‘Obama began the 2009 speech by praising the same seminary that Sisi reprimanded,’ emphasizing ‘That (Obama’s approach) is different from Sisi, who is trying to suppress the Brotherhood movement and push Al-Azhar’s Islamic leaders toward modernity.’”

Just as Sisi condemned ongoing practices of the Islamic world and was responsible for removing the “ruinous regime of the Muslim Brotherood from power,” Sherman said Obama by contrast “heaped effusive praise on Islam, and insisted on places of honor for senior Brotherhood representatives – to the chagrin of his host, president Hosni Mubarak.”

Sherman added that Obama’s words and gestures in Cairo had provided a “considerable – arguably, crucial – fillip” in sweeping the Brotherhood to power within two years.

Sherman argues that Sisi wasn’t calling for gradual reform but “swift revolution.”

“There does appear to be the beginning of rumbling discontent in the West, and indications that resistance to Islamic-inspired outrages is beginning to emerge – albeit far too timidly and far too slowly,” Sherman said.

“It is still too early to assess whether the savage slaughter in Paris … will prove a tipping-point in the mood toward Islam and shift it from angst to anger,” he said. “There is, however, considerable room for skepticism.”

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