Islam’s Reformation

In the days since masked gun men claiming theywere avenging the Prophet Mohammed killed in cold blood workers at a French satirical magazine, it is astounding howmany continue to deny any link between the attack and Islamist extremism.

We’ll limit ourselves to quoting French President François Hollande, who made a plea for unity. “Not to be divided,” he said, means we must not make any confusion concerning these terrorists and fanatics that have nothing to do with the Muslim religion.”

Meanwhile in Egypt, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi strikes us as having the more honest take. Just days before the shootings, Egypt’s president opened the newyear with an appeal for a “religious revolution” to purge Islam of the violence he says is destroying the religion from within and making enemies of the rest of the world.

Here’s howhe put it: “This is antagonizing the entire world. It’s antagonizing the entire world! Does this mean 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?” What he is calling for is not a change in the religion itself but in the interpretation of sacred texts in accord with today’s realities.

President Sisi is right, and hiswords have been welcomed in the West.

It’s also no coincidence he delivered his remarks at Al-Azhar University, birthplace of the Muslim Brotherhood. Or that days later, Sisi became the first Egyptian president to attend Coptic Christmas Mass, part of his effort to underscore his message of equality for all Egyptians. But here’s the dilemma. The test of the revolution Sisi hopes for is not whether it is popular in the West or among moderate Muslims. The test is whether it is credible to those who would otherwise be attracted to, say, the Muslim Brotherhood.

It’s no secret that Islam has had a difficult time accommodating itself to the modern demands of tolerance and religious plurality. Hence its continuing clash with the liberal democratic West. Sisi’s dilemma is that he presides over an Egyptian government that is stifling all criticism and jailing the very people a religious revolution would be aimed at.

However much his moves might be justified in terms of restoring order to Egypt, they will not do much for the credibility of any Islamic reform linked to him.

Any effort for an authentically Islamic commitment to freedom and tolerance has our best wishes. But a religious revolution in Islam will never be credible if it is seen as a tool of a repressive Egyptian state.