Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has called for religious reformation of the Muslim faith. “We need to revolutionize our religion,” he proclaimed to the applause of an audience of Muslim clerics and scholars.
This is a HUGE story that is being ignored by the mainstream media.
People in the West often say that “moderate Muslims” need to speak out more to condemn the violent jihad being waged against non Muslims by their co-religionists. But when they do – they are too often ignored.
In a speech on New Year’s day, al-Sisi called for a renewed vision of Islam which he said “is being destroyed” and “lost by our own hands.”
Via The Washington Free Beacon:
“Is it possible that 1.6 billion people (Muslims worldwide) should want to kill the rest of the world’s population—that is, 7 billion people—so that they themselves may live?” he asked. “Impossible.”
Speaking to an audience of religious scholars celebrating the birth of Islam’s prophet, Mohammed, he called on the religious establishment to lead the fight for moderation in the Muslim world. “You imams (prayer leaders) are responsible before Allah. The entire world—I say it again, the entire world—is waiting for your next move because this umma (a word that can refer either to the Egyptian nation or the entire Muslim world) is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost—and it is being lost by our own hands.”
He was speaking in Al-Azhar University in Cairo, widely regarded as the leading world center for Islamic learning.
“The corpus of texts and ideas that we have made sacred over the years, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world. You cannot feel it if you remain trapped within this mindset. You must step outside yourselves and reflect on it from a more enlightened perspective.”
Al-Sisi is the general appointed by President Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, who later went on to lead the “coup” against Morsi. (Which the Obama administration opposed.) Sisi not only ousted Morsi from power, he brought charges against him and his cohorts, and banned (the Obama supported) Muslim Brotherhood which is the ideological forebear of Hamas and al Qaeda, supports Shari’a law, and approves of terrorism against Israel and the West.
These actions were proven to be highly popular. As The WFB reports, “when new elections were held last May, Sisi, now a civilian, won a resounding victory.”
Meanwhile in Qatar, via Hot Air, “it “looks like the diplomatic efforts of Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi may have paid off.” Khaled Mashaal, who ran the recent Hamas war on Israel from the safety of Doha where he has long kept his organization’s worldwide headquarters, got kicked out of Qatar altogether — along with the Muslim Brotherhood. CNN reports that the expelled officials will likely end up in Turkey.
Of course, Obama’s dear friend in Turkey comes to the rescue.
In his speech on New Years Day, Sisi specifically referred to the “corpus of texts and ideas” that are “antagonizing the entire world.” That doesn’t square at all with the PC pablum we constantly hear from the left – most notably from the Lecturer-in-Chief who is an authority on all things – including Islam.
“Now let’s make two things clear: ISIL is not Islamic,” Obama said in a prime time speech on September 10, 2014. “No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim.”
In a speech before the UN on September 25, he called on Muslims to denounce extremist ideology, saying a lethal group of terrorists “have perverted one of the world’s great religions.”
But the problem with Islam is the destructive ideology that comes from the texts themselves, as Sisi noted.
For example, here are a few that are highly problematic. These are pretty straightforward.
Quran (2:191-193) – “And kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out. And Al-Fitnah [disbelief] is worse than killing…
but if they desist, then lo! Allah is forgiving and merciful. And fight them until there is no more Fitnah [disbelief and worshipping of others along with Allah] and worship is for Allah alone. But if they cease, let there be no transgression except against Az-Zalimun (the polytheists, and wrong-doers, etc.)“
Quran (2:216) – “Fighting is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. But Allah knoweth, and ye know not.” Not only does this verse establish that violence can be virtuous, but it also contradicts the myth that fighting is intended only in self-defense, since the audience was obviously not under attack at the time. From the Hadith, we know that this verse was narrated at a time that Muhammad was actually trying to motivate his people into raiding merchant caravans for loot.
Quran (3:151) – “Soon shall We cast terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers, for that they joined companions with Allah, for which He had sent no authority”.
Repeating over and over that Islam is a “religion of peace” doesn’t make it peaceful. When “extremists” like members of ISIS “kill them (non-Muslims) wherever they find them), they are not distorting anything. They are taking the Koran at its word. A world-wide reformation of Islam is sorely needed.
Hugh Hewitt at Townhall wonders “why this isn’t a front page story in all of the major American papers and across all of the American networks?”
I read the Beacon’s coverage of the speech to my audience today, emphasizing how extraordinary it was, and how the Islamist radicals would try to do to al Sisi what they did to Sadat. Investor’s Business Daily covered the speech, as did PJ Media’s Roger L. Simon, but what about The New York Times and The Washington Post? The latter had blogger and law prof Eugene Volokh cover it (that’s it as of midnight Monday EST) and the former had nothing. Remarkable.
Sisi has taken an important first step and has placed a giant target on his back in doing so. He needs all the encouragement he can get – so why the silence from the MSM?
SEE ALSO:
Ben Barrack, Shoebat: Five Years After Obama Speech in Cairo, Egypt’s Muslim President Gives Speech at same University To UNDO the Damage:
In 2009, Barack Obama kicked off his pro-Muslim Brotherhood agenda with a speech at al-Azhar University in Cairo. More than five years later, that country’s Muslim president Gen. Abdel Fatah el-Sisi spoke at that University and in many ways attempted to undo the damage. The irony is that the Muslim President of Egypt sounded far less like a Muslim fundamentalist than the President of the United States did, speaking at the same exact University.
If you had to name a university in the world that is ground zero for Islamic fundamentalist teaching, Al-Azhar University in Egypt would certainly qualify. Regardless of one’s views on Islam, Egyptian President Gen. Abdel Fatah el-Sisi demonstrated a tremendous amount of guts when he spoke in front of the University’s top Islamic scholars recently.
They Awarded their 1st annual Dhimmi Award 
Nice Deb 