Rom
13:4 KJV For
he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil,
be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God,
a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.
Providence
seems to have an able and rightly directed minister in Egypt. I am reminded of Thabo Mbeki's principled
resistance to the HIV hoax.
Egypt’s
al-Sisi Makes Extraordinary Speech on Islam http://j.mp/0alSisiIslam or http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2015/01/03/egypts-al-sisi-makes-extraordinary-speech-on-islam/
PJMedia Roger L. Simon | January 3rd, 2015 - 10:20 pm
Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi made an
extraordinary speech on New Year’s Day to Cairo’s Al-Azhar and the Awqaf
Ministry calling for a long overdue virtual ecclesiastical revolution in
Islam. This is something no Western
leader has the had the courage to do, certainly not Barack Obama, despite his
Muslim education.
Accusing the umma (world Islamic population) of
encouraging the hostility of the entire world, al-Sisi’s speech is so dramatic
and essentially revolutionary it brings to mind Khrushchev’s famous speech
exposing Stalin. Many have called for a reformation of Islam, but for the
leader of the largest Arab nation to do so has world-changing implications.
Here are the key parts as translated on Raymond
Ibrahim’s blog:
"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!
"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. 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 7
billion—so that they themselves may live? Impossible!
"I am saying these words here at Al Azhar,
before this assembly of scholars and ulema—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."
Al-Sisi is certainly correct. The whole world has been waiting for a long
time for the next move of these imams or for somebody, anybody that will
modernize Islam as other religions have done..
Whether that will happen, of course, is another question, but what
al-Sisi is saying here is in many ways more revolutionary than the “Arab
Spring.” People ask, where are the
“moderate Muslims”? Well, one of them
may be the president of Egypt. The boys from Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, Boko
Haram, al Qaeda, etc., etc., are probably not too happy about what al-Sisi
said. Let’s hope he doesn’t suffer the
fate of Anwar Sadat for his courage.
Related
Notes
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I2C 150104aa Rom13v4 al Sisi on Islam | I2C | 150104
1255 et | Rom13v4 al Sisi on Islam
