IslamSisi calls for “revolutionizing” Islam
In an important speech delivered to Islamic scholars at Al Azhar University, Egyptian president Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi calls for revolutionizing Islam. “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!” he 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!” adding: “I say and repeat again that we are in need of a religious revolution.”
On 28 December 2014, Egyptian president Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi gave an astonishing speech to Islamic scholars at Al-Azhar University in Cairo. Al Azhar, founded in 970, is regarded as the world’s oldest and most important center for Islamic studies.
Not less astonishing than the speech was the fact that it was hardly covered in the West, despite its importance.
In his speech Sisi called for “revolutionizing” Islam. Here are the relevant sections:
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 [a reference to a speech he made on 14 January 2014]. 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 centuries, 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 seven billion — so that they themselves may live? Impossible!
I am saying these words here at Al Azhar, before this assembly of scholars and ulema [religious elite consisting of Islamic of scholars] — 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.
* It is not clear whether in the second instance of referring to umma Sisi means Egypt (“the nation”) or whether he is referring, as he did in the first instance, to the entire Islamic world (we may find a clue in the fact that he used the adjective “entire” the first time he referred to umma)
See video of excerpts from the speech (in Arabic) here.
“Is al-Sisi the ‘Muslim Martin Luther’ people have been waiting for? Almost surely not,” writes Jonah Goldberg in USA Today. “Al-Sisi, a military man, not a cleric, could be more like an Egyptian Atatürk — the Turkish strongman who modernized and secularized Turkey a century ago.”
Goldberg concludes:
What is clear, however, is that this is a big deal. Al-Sisi is doing exactly what Westerners have been crying out for since at least Sept. 11, 2001, if not before that…. Whatever your own view of the man, and whether you think he’s sincere, al-Sisi’s efforts to combat Muslim extremism — militarily and rhetorically — deserve closer attention, if not now then after the images from Paris fade.
