I reported on this the other day, stating that Sisi himself believes that Islam/Islamic texts lead Muslims to intolerance. Andy Bostom reminds us that Sisi, first and foremost, is just another classic Muslim believer ”whose actions speak louder than his hollow words.”
Sisi Is Just Another Caliphate-Idealizing Apologist For Islam Whose In-Actions Speak Louder Than His Hollow Words
Zabibah Brothers: Nour Party Salafists supported Sisi because he was deemed “faithful to the Sharia”
Despite the gushing over Egyptian President Sisi’s New Years Day, 2015 speech(to Al-Azhar University and the Awqaf Ministry), I will remain entirely unimpressed until his rhetoric can be: (I) reconciled with Sisi’s support for Islam’s Caliphate system, accompanied by his vociferous denunciation of Western secularism; (II) matched by concrete actions which demonstrate he is willing to oppose the ongoing application, for example, of Sharia “blasphemy” law directed at hapless Coptic Christians in his own beloved Egypt.
Our learned analysts might wish to remember that Sisi’s Zabibah Brothers-in-Arms (see this 2011 discussion of the Egyptian Zabibah-stan), the Nour Party “Salafists,” supported his Presidential candidacy because Sisi was deemed “faithful to the Sharia.” Nour, at that time, even sloganized, “Together hand in hand we build the country through religion.”
During an August 2013 interview, Sisi proffered this flimsy apologetic for Islam, which in essence differs little from what he opined January 1, 2015:
I want to tell you that those so-called Islamists have done harm to the image of Islam. Those who seem to be keen on religion have harmed Islam like never before. Islam is now synonymous to killing, blood and destruction. We have to assess the situation in an objective way and see how the world and other countries see Islam.The problem is definitely with implementation, not with the approach. It is implementation that has done harm to Islam.
Sisi’s 2006 U.S. Army War College “mini-thesis”—which had to be obtained via FOIA request over Sisi’s apparent objections—romanticized the “democratic” Caliphate system, and unequivocally decried Western secularism, as I described in August 2013:
