In 2009, Al-Azhar, a noted center of Islamic teachings, co-hosted President Obama’s famous speech to the Muslim world. There, and in countless other speeches, Obama demonstrated an unwillingness to frontally criticize Islamicist terror — and connect it to a significant thread of radical religions faith — perhaps for fear of being seen as attacking Islam itself.
Egypt’s president has destroyed this debilitating misconception, demonstrating that clear-thinking Muslims fully understand how radical Islamicists and the all-too-common religious ideology they espouse constitute a mortal danger to Muslims themselves.
Most dramatically, Al-Sisi asserted: “I say and repeat again that we are in need of a religious revolution.” He stressed that “it’s inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire umma [Muslims worldwide] to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world.”
