Muslim
world largely ignores call for 'revolution' in Islam
Western analysts react to Egyptian president's speech with
skepticism but hope, by Michael Maloof
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.”
“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’
“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.”
http://www.wnd.com/2015/01/muslim-world-largely-ignores-call-for-revolution-in-islam/
