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On New Year’s Day, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi—the hero of Egypt’s 2013 anti-Muslim Brotherhood revolution—made some remarkable comments concerning the need for a “religious revolution.”

Watch the video below or click here to read the excerpt:

Sisi made his remarks during a speech celebrating the birth of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad—which was ironically held on January 1, 2015 (a day not acknowledged or celebrated in the Muslim world as it is based on a Christian calendar)—and he was addressing the nation’s top Islamic authorities from among the Awqaf Ministry (religious endowments) and Al Azhar University.

Although Sisi’s words were directed to Islam’s guardians and articulators, they indirectly lead to several important lessons for Western observers.

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.

“It’s inconceivable,” he said, “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!”

What a refreshingly honest statement to come from not only a political leader but a Muslim political leader who has much to lose, not least his life! Contrast his very true words with the habitual reassurances of the Western establishment that Islamic world violence and intolerance is a product of anything and everything but Islam.

Even after the appearance of the head-chopping, infidel-crucifying Islamic State, politicians like U.S. President Obama and U.K. Prime Minister Cameron insisted that the “caliphate” is not Islamic, despite all the evidence otherwise. Yet here is Sisi, the pious Muslim, saying that the majority of the terrorism plaguing the world today is related to the holy texts of Islam themselves:

That thinking [that is responsible for producing “anxiety, danger, killing and destruction” around the world]—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!

As a Muslim, Sisi will not say that Islam, the “religion,” is responsible for “antagonizing the entire world,” 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.”

Recall that here in the West, Islamic terrorists are seen as mere “criminals” and their terrorism as “crimes” without mention of any Islamic text or ideology driving them.

The Egyptian president further invoked the classical Islamic teaching—the “thinking”—that divides the world into two warring halves: the Muslim world (or in Islamic/Arabic parlance, Dar al-Islam) which must forever be in a struggle with the rest of the world (or Dar al-Harb, the “abode of war”) till, in the Koran’s words, “all religion belongs to Allah” (Koran 8:39).

“Is it possible,” asked Sisi, “that 1.6 billion people should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants—that is 7 billion—so that they themselves may live?”

Sisi made another important point that Western leaders and media habitually lie about: after affirming that Islamic “thinking” is “antagonizing the entire world,” he said that “this umma is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost—and it is being lost by our own hands.”

In other words, Islamic terrorism and chaos is not a product of grievance, territorial disputes, colonialism, Israel, offensive cartoons, or anything else the West points to. It’s a product of their “own hands.”

Again, one must appreciate how refreshing it is for a top political leader in the heart of the Islamic world to make such candid admissions that his Western counterparts dare not even think let alone speak. And bear in mind, Sisi has much to lose as opposed to Western politicians. Calls by the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists that he is an apostate are sure to grow more aggressive now.

The critic may ask, “All well and good, but words aside, what has Sisi actually done to help bring about this “religious revolution”? In fact, one popular journalist, Ibrahim Eissa, recently said just this on live television in Egypt:

Five months have passed since he [Sisi] became president, after his amazing showing at elections. Okay: the president has, more than once, indicated the need for a renewal of religious discourse…. But he has not done a single thing, President Sisi, to renew religious discourse. Nothing at all.

Yet it seems that Sisi has an answer for this, too: it is not his job as president of Egypt to reform the thinking of the Islamic world; rather, that role belongs to the ulema—which is precisely why he addressed them with such candid words. Indeed, he repeatedly stressed that it is the ulema’s job to lead this “religious revolution.”

Thus, “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…. 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.”

Meanwhile, while Sisi was making these groundbreaking if not historic statements, the Western mainstream media, true to form, ignored them and instead offered puerile and redundant headlines, most critical of Sisi, like:

• “Egypt President Sisi urged to free al-Jazeera reporter” (BBC, Jan 1; to which I respond, “Why, so Al Jazeera can continue lying and misleading the West about Sisi and Egypt’s anti-Muslim Brotherhood revolution?”)
• “Egyptian gays living in fear under Sisi regime” (USA Today, Jan. 2; to which I respond, “Homosexuals live in fear in all Islamic nations, regardless of Sisi.”)
• “George Clooney’s wife Amal risks arrest in Egypt” (Fox News, Jan. 3; to which I respond, “Who cares? Only her innocence or guilt matter, not her husband’s fame”—which is the only reason Fox News chose the story in the first place.)

Whether concerning the true nature of Islam or the true nature of Sisi, here is the latest example of how unfathomably ignorant all those millions of people who exclusively follow the so-called “mainstream media” must surely be.

Hurriyet News

By Burak Bekdil

Turkey’s leaders have the habit of chasing conspirators who they claim add fuel to Islamophobia in Europe. Those who ridicule the Islamic faith may not be the ones who conspire against Islam in faraway lands.

The final week of the year featured the usual scenes in Turkey: A man dressed as a janissary chasing another dressed as Santa Claus in order to give him a good beating… Provincial education directors warning pupils against “Christmas and New Year celebrations”...

Meanwhile, an apparently more creative man, Muhittin Hamdi Yıldırım, the chairman of an association of religious officials, called on Turks to celebrate the 1384th anniversary of the conquest of Mecca instead of celebrating New Year’s Eve.

He has an explanation for why Turks should not celebrate the New Year: “[A verse in the sura] Maida tells Muslims not to make friends with Jews and Christians. This [commandment] also means that Muslims should not adopt their traditions.” The logic is simple: If a Muslim celebrates the New Year s/he will have adopted a Christian tradition and will have made friends with Christians and therefore have sinned. (Don’t tell President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that the Turks still have Sunday as the week’s official holiday!)

All the same, despite their restless efforts, the Turks still lag far behind the Saudis in ridiculing Islam. As Raymond Ibrahim recently mentioned in the Middle East Forum, Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti, the country’s highest religious authority, said “There is nothing wrong with girls below 15 getting married.” (“Saudi Clerics Fight for the Right to Marry Children,” Middle East Forum, Dec. 30, 2014)

In an earlier speech, the Saudi Grand Mufti, Sheikh Abdul Aziz, had called for the destruction of all Christian churches on the Arabian Peninsula. “The consistency makes perfect sense,” wrote Mr. Ibrahim.

He also reminded that in 2011, Salih bin Fawzan, a prominent cleric and member of Saudi Arabia’s highest religious council, issued a fatwa asserting there is no minimum age for marriage and that girls can be married “even if they are in the cradle.”

Mr. Ibrahim wrote: “The grand point of the Saudi fatwa, however, is not that girls as young as nine can be married … but rather that there is no age limit whatsoever. The only question open to consideration is whether the girl is physically capable of handling her ‘husband.’”

The Saudi clergy (and shariah) is very consistent in defying – not just modernity – but simple reason. In 2009, Saudi courts declined to nullify a marriage between a six-year-old girl and a 58-year-old man.

Later, Sheikh Abdul Aziz insisted that girls are ready for marriage by the ages of “10 or 12.” “Good upbringing,” the Grand Mufti reasoned, “makes a girl ready to perform all marital duties.” So, the Saudi intellectual challenge is between two ideas for the suitable age for female marriage: The cradle, or “10 or 12.”

Apparently, the Turks are increasingly embracing Saudi Arabia’s learned men. In 2013, a Turkish scholar, Erhan Tunç from Gaziantep University, found that one in three marriages in Turkey involved at least one party under the age of 18. His research also found that only 18 percent of child brides in Turkey are literate.

According to the International Strategic Research Organization, underage marriages in Turkey account for 14 percent of all marriages. Professor Nazan Moroğlu, president of the Turkish Federation of University Women, found that there has been an increase of 94.2 percent in applications to courts by families to get marriage permits for underage marriages.

The official account may be slightly brighter but it is not much different. According to the Family and Social Policies Ministry, more than 500,000 girls under the age of 17 have been married in the past decade or so.

More importantly, all of these numbers exclude “unofficial [religious]” marriages, which most probably outnumber official ones, especially in rural Turkey.

The learned men of Saudi Arabia tell the Muslims that men can marry “women” in the cradle. Fortunately, the learned men of Turkey do not recommend that – yet. They are busy running after people dressed as Santa Claus to beat them up and make sure Muslims do not celebrate the New Year.

Federico Gaon, a journalist for Infobae, an Argentine news website, recently asked me a number of questions which were translated and published here.

A year ends and another begins, and the Middle East long could occur from year to year. So much so, that four years into the "Arab Spring", the expected wave of democratization among Muslim countries was swept by civil war and a strong Islamist resurgence. Since then, many questions surround the issues related to this controversial area. To try to clarify the picture, Infobae consulted several experts to briefly share their views on the current situation and forecasts for 2015.

Raymond Ibrahim American specialist in Islam and the Middle East

1. In your view, what are the prospects facing the Middle East in 2015? (Likely scenarios) Things will likely stay in the status quo; we will hear of sporadic US strikes/victories against the Islamic State (ISIS), then, just as they "suddenly" appeared, we will hear how they have "suddenly" acquired more territory, more influence. I wrote more about this here. 2. In general terms, how would you assess the situation of the religious minorities in the Middle East. Will it improve or worsen in 2015? Based on recent (and long term) trends, they will continue to get worse. Recall that a century ago, almost 1/4 of the Middle East was still Christian. Today something like 2 percent is. The reason being widespread discrimination and, in recent years, wholesale persecution, a byproduct of Islamic radicalization. Keep in mind that, in the 7th century when Islam came onto the scene, the overwhelming majority of north Africa and southwest Asia — the Middle East — was Christian. Over the course of centuries their numbers have dwindled and, barring some unforseen "miracle," they will continue to dwindle. Already nations like Morocco, Algeria, and Libya have virtually no Christians. 3. Looking back, how do you assess the "Arab Spring" ? Can we expect positive outcomes in 2015? Do you think ISIS will be defeated? ISIS may be defeated — like al-Qaeda was supposedly defeated — but that doesn't mean the ideology behind such groups will be defeated, and as long as that ideology is alive, so will the jihad. I elaborate greatly on this theme in this recent article.

PJ Media

By Michael Ledeen

I had lunch yesterday with three gentlemen who are very well read, who follow the news attentively, and who would shudder to think they are victims of ideological censorship. Yet not one of them — and the trio includes a very famous former reporter (a first-class reporter at that) for one of the country’s top newspapers — had heard a word about Egyptian President Sisi’s remarkable New Year’s Day speech, in which he called upon Muslim leaders and scholars to carry out a “religious revolution.”

All three watch TV news and read the leading dailies, so they were surprised that they hadn’t heard about it. They agreed that the story warranted banner headlines. World-wide.

I don’t watch TV, but I do listen to a good deal of radio, and the Sisi story hasn’t exactly dominated the shows I listen to. Perhaps it will, but for now it’s material for the adepts, those of us who read Roger, or Raymond, or the Examiner.

It’s a huge story. And it’s been spiked, at least for the moment.

Sisi was speaking in Cairo’s most famous theological center, and his audience included the country’s leading imams. He told them that the dominant thinking of virtually all authoritative Islamic religious leaders had turned the entire world against them:

The corpus of texts and ideas that we have made sacred over the years, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world. You cannot feel it if you remain trapped within this mindset. You must step outside yourselves and reflect on it from a more enlightened perspective.

Note those last three words. He is telling the imams that they lack enlightenment, they are “trapped” in a mindset of their own creation — one that enforces a fundamentalist reading of Islamic law (sharia) and leads to violent jihad. I don’t know the Arabic word or phrase for “basta!” but that’s his message; he tells them they’ve got to change their thinking, and therefore, their actions. Enough, already:

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…

Raymond Ibrahim doesn’t give us the whole speech, but I have no doubt that his listeners got the point. They’ve seen what happens when religious thinking remains trapped in the Islamist box. They saw the Muslim Brotherhood seize power after the overthrow of Mubarak. They saw the Brothers make a mess of most everything, and then they saw Sisi’s military remove the Brothers. Sisi knew that there was no possible compromise. He knew, and knows, that this is a battle to the death. He’s either going to destroy the Islamists, or they’re going to do him in.

I’ve read some comments suggesting that he has signed his own death warrant with this speech, but the speech simply lays out his mission, about which his would-be assassins have had no doubts from the get-go. That speech says “if you don’t change, you’re doomed.”
As Roger says, no Western leader (save Pope Benedict, only once, followed by a hasty retreat) has had the courage to pronounce similar words, which reject the false nostrums that “it’s not about Islam,” and that “Islam is a religion of peace.” It has always been about Islam and jihad, and yet before Sisi, the misnamed leaders of the West have fled from these basic truths, even though they, and we along with them, face the same life-or-death war in which Sisi is so fully engaged. It’s jihad, all the way down.

Jihad defines the war, and its outcome will have immense weight in determining the future of Islam. As I have said countless times, the jihadists compose a messianic mass movement. They believe their war is blessed by Allah, and therefore they are certain of victory.

So what happens if they lose?

The answer: you hear a great sucking sound as the air leaves the apocalyptic balloon. Defeated messiahs rarely do well, once their followers see that the Almighty abandoned them, or, even worse, changed sides. You can see this in Iraq, where Al Qaeda and its Iranian allies suffered a clear defeat at the hands of the Americans. The jihadis faced a reversal of fortune, with recruitments sharply down, and they pulled in their horns all over the region. Libya hastened to come to terms, and the Iranians purported to have cut back on their nuclear program. They had more serious things to tend to, as millions of Iranians took to the streets in an effort to bring down the defeated regime.

The new American president wasn’t interested. Indeed, he sided with the regime, retreated from a winning position next door in Iraq, and laid the groundwork for our withdrawal from Afghanistan. With our most dangerous enemies at our mercy, President Obama rescued and embraced them.

We all know what happened thereafter: our enemies rebuilt their forces, Iran now dominates Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, Al Qaeda is as lethal as ever, and now we’ve got Daesh to contend with.

Now President Sisi is in a position similar to ours in Iraq after the defeat of Al Qaeda and Iran. He has defeated the Muslim Brotherhood, and he is pressing his advantage, liquidating the leaders the Brothers had elevated over the course of eighty-odd years, and in the last week he delivered the blockbuster speech and became the first president in Egyptian history to attend Coptic Christmas celebrations in Cairo.

It’s a very big deal. If he wins, the jihadis, and, along with them, the ideological mass movement Sisi has challenged will be gravely damaged. If he loses, we face very grave consequences indeed.

The newsies and pundits should pay attention.

Investors Business Daily

Reform: To many in the West, Islam seems mired in a pre-medieval mindset that makes it unable to reconcile the fundamental precepts of its faith with those of the modern world. But there are encouraging signs of change.

In what Roger L. Simon rightly called "an extraordinary" New Year's speech that got virtually no attention in the West, Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi issued a sweeping, no-holdsbarred critique of Islam — and suggested it needs major reform.

"It's inconceivable," said al-Sisi, as translated by Raymond Ibrahim's blog, "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."

“Is it possible,” he asked, “that 1.6 billion (Muslims) should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants — that is 7 billion — so that they themselves may live?” Islam needs a “religious revolution,” he concluded. Three things are notable in this remarkable speech. One, al-Sisi is the leader of Egypt, the most populous Arab Islamic nation, with 5% of the world’s Muslims. His speech will have a major impact.

Two, it comes in the wake of the failed “Arab Spring” and the subsequent takeover of a wide swath of the Mideast by the fundamentalist Islamic State and its allies. It suggests there’s a growing revulsion at being associated with the beheaders, rapists and torturers who operate under the flag of fundamentalist Islam.

As the British Guardian newspaper notes, “spiraling instability across much of the Arab world” has led to 16.7 million Arab refugees, an unprcedented human tide of misery. These are not happy people, and many will rightly blame their suffering on the Muslim extremists and terrorists who’ve driven them out.

Three, al-Sisi pointedly made his comments at Al-Azhar — the same Cairo mosque/university that gave birth to the Muslim Brotherhood, and where President Obama in 2009 made a cringe-inducing apology to the Muslim world. The contrast couldn’t be sharper.

Nor is al-Sisi alone. Bridget Johnson of the PJ Tatler quotes influential Sheikh Ahmad al-Ghamdi, the former head of Saudi Arabia's religious police at the holy site of Mecca, as saying women shouldn't have to wear the veil and should be able to mix with men, wear makeup and travel to foreign countries without being accompanied by a male.

Such a statement may seem insignificant in the liberated West, but in a country like Saudi Arabia the very idea that women can have their own identity apart from husbands or fathers is, well, revolutionary.

Islam has often been likened to medieval Christianity before the Reformation. Whether that's true or not, even this inkling of an Islamic Reformation should be much welcomed.

Right Side News

By Alan Caruba

The news from Paris about the killing of twelve journalists highlights Islam's war on the West that represents a fundamental truth about this cult of Mohammad.

Most are familiar with the Islamic schism between the majority Sunnis and the minority Shiites. It dates back to the very earliest days of Islam when the two groups disagreed over who should be the successor to Mohammad.

There is a new schism in Islam these days and it is between a moderate interpretation of Islam and fundamentalism. We have all seen what fundamentalism produces.

The past year had dramatic and tragic slaughters by the Islamic State (ISIS) in the Syrian-Iraqi area they control, the murder of more than 140 school children in Pakistan by the Taliban, and the kidnapping of 276 girls by Boko Haram in Nigeria. These acts represent a strict interpretation of Shia law based on the Koran.

That is why an address by Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, on New Year’s Day to clerics at Al-Azhar and the Awqaf Ministry is particularly significant. As reported by Raymond Ibrahim of the Middle East Forum, Sisi “a vocal supporter for a renewed vision of Islam, made what must be his most forceful and impassioned plea to date.”

His speech was a warning that “the corpus of (Islamic) texts and ideas that we have made sacred over the years” are “antagonizing the entire world.”

Referring to the 1.6 billion Muslims, Sisi said it is not possible that they “should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants—that is 7 billion—so that they themselves may live.” Islam, said Sisi “is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost—and it is being lost by our own hands.”

I cannot recall any other Islamic leader saying anything this bold and this true. Directly addressing the clerics, Sisi said “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.” That is, of course, exactly what has been occurring.

Sisi called for “a religious revolution”, what Christians would call a reformation. “You, imams, are responsible before Allah. The entire world is waiting for your next move…”

Based on negotiations led by the U.S., the world is waiting to see what Iran, the home of the Islamic Revolution—the name given to the ayatollah’s movement that overthrew the Shah in 1979—will do in the face of demands that it cease its quest to produce its own nuclear weapons.

You don’t have to be a U.S. diplomat to know the answer to that. As Behnam Ben Taleblu of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies recently wrote, for decades the Iranian leadership has referred to “American Islam”, a term that describes what Iran “perceives to be a depoliticized perversion of the true faith, devoid of the revolutionary sentiment that guides the Islamic Republic.” Calling it “American” demonstrates their contempt for everything American.

The Iranians even apply the term to Muslim nations “deemed pliant before the will of superpowers like the United States.” In their view, they are the champions of “the pure Islam of Mohammad.” The Iranians are Shiites. As such, they are a minority sect within Islam, though a large one by any standard.

Those U.S. diplomats negotiating to get Iran to agree to cease pursuing the ability to construct their own nuclear weapons should read the memoirs of Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister and lead nuclear negotiator. As Taleblu notes, Zarif has a PhD from an American university, but he still wrote “We have a fundamental problem with the West and especially with America. This is because we are claimants of a mission, which has a global dimension.”

That mission is to impose Islam—their fundamental brand of it—on the entire world. That would get easier if they can threaten the world with nuclear weapons. Iran has been the leading sponsor of Islamic terror since its revolution in 1979.

The gap between Egyptian President Sisi’s concerns about the state of Islam today and the intention of fundamentalists like Zarif are a capsule version of what is occurring among Muslims throughout the world.

Islam is not inclined toward any form of modernity and most certainly not toward any form of personal freedom so the world has to remain watchful and, at this point, far less inclined to give its terrorists a pass with the claim they do not represent Islam.

I was recently interviewed on Reel Talk with Audrey Russo. Topics included why Europe should learn Ethiopia’s “Islam Lesson”; the continued lack of coverage of Christians persecution by the Western media; the similarities between Islamic practices and the Sicilian Mafia, and more. Click here to listen to the 30-minute-interview.