"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!" - Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Al-Azhar, January 1
"O ye who believe! Fight those of the disbelievers who are near to you, and let them find harshness in you, and know that Allah is with those who keep their duty." - Koran, Sura 9:123
"Violence... occurs between Muslims, on the one hand, and Orthodox Serbs in the Balkans, Jews in Israel, Hindus in India, Buddhists in Burma and Catholics in the Philippines. Islam has bloody borders." - Samuel Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations?" Foreign Affairs, 1993
On New Year's Day, Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi delivered a remarkable address at Cairo's Al-Azhar University.
The Obama-Sisi contrast
He directed measured, but nonetheless severe, censure at much of the Islamic clergy, their interpretation of religious texts and their prescription for how Muslims should practice their faith in the modern day: "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!"
Ironically, Sisi spoke at the same venue that Barack Obama chose to deliver his 2009 "Outreach Speech" to the Muslim world. But the contrast between the two could hardly be more striking. As one US 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."
Sisi used the occasion to condemn the ongoing practices in the Islamic world, after having coercively removed the regressive and ruinous regime of the Muslim Brotherhood from power. By contrast, Obama heaped effusive praise on Islam, and insisted on places of honor for senior Brotherhood representatives - to the chagrin of his host, president Hosni Mubarak. Indeed, many consider Obama's words and gestures in Cairo as providing a considerable - arguably, crucial - fillip in the process that swept the Brotherhood to power barely two years later.
Revolution not reform
Although Sisi was at pains to appear respectful to Islam as a religion per se, there was little doubt as to the grim view he took of the consequences of the manner in which Muslims were being instructed to observe their faith.
"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!" he said.
Sisi appealed to the religious establishment for a "more enlightened perspective": "I am saying these words here at Al-Azhar, before this assembly of scholars and ulema [top Islamic scholars] - Allah Almighty be witness to your truth on Judgment Day concerning that which I'm talking about now...you cannot feel it if you remain trapped within this mindset. You need to step outside of yourselves to be able to... reflect on it from a more enlightened perspective."
But despite his ostensible deference, Sisi made no bones about what was called for. Not gradual reform but swift revolution. "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," he urged.
Tendency to appease
Sisi is undoubtedly correct in his diagnosis of Islam as comprising "a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world." However, until recently the tendency of the "rest of the world" has been to appease rather than oppose, to understand rather than withstand, to excuse rather than expunge.
Nonetheless, lately 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.
It is still too early to assess whether the savage slaughter in Paris last week will prove a tipping-point in the mood toward Islam and shift it from angst to anger. There is, however, considerable room for skepticism.
For despite the short-term uproar the killings at Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher has generated, the death toll pales when compared to far-greater Muslim-motivated atrocities perpetrated in the West without producing a sustained, resolute response to deal adequately with the manifest menace.
