Bucking Stereotypes, Egypt’s El-Sisi Fights Terror and Seeks ‘Revolution’ in Islam

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El-Sisi’s vision includes purging Islam of extremist intolerance and violence, elements that terror groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State use as recruitment tools.

“El-Sisi’s remarks have to be commended. He delivered them at the center of Egypt’s religious establishment,” Oren Kessler, deputy director of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), told JNS.org. “He went right into the belly of the beast and spoke to the clerics and sheikhs.”
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FDD’s Kessler does not necessarily view El-Sisi’s religious beliefs as problematic, noting that former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat—who visited Jerusalem and made peace with Israel, only to be assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood as a result—was also a devout Muslim.

“He is representative of the Egyptian people as a whole,” Kessler said. “The Egyptian people are very devout, both Muslims and Christians.”

“From the Israeli point of view, his military and intelligence services have cooperated with Israel at unprecedented levels. … I think, his private beliefs aside, he is a committed opponent of the Muslim Brotherhood and by extension of Hamas and other Islamic extremists,” added Kessler.
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But while larger problems brew in the Middle East, particularly the emergence of Islamic State, the U.S. has changed its tone on Egypt and has signaled that it will restore foreign aid to the country. Kessler said the Egypt approach of the Obama administration and Congress has now “become more pragmatic” and boils down to the past priorities of “stability, protecting the Suez Canal, [the] peace treaty with Israel, and fighting Islamists.”

“El-Sisi provides all these things,” said Kessler.

At the same time, El-Sisi has taken steps to protect Egypt’s beleaguered Christian minority at a time when Christians throughout the Middle East have been driven from their ancient homelands and faced genocide at the hands of Islamic State.
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El-Sisi has also taken steps to improve Egypt’s economy, which has been in free-fall since Mubarak’s ouster in 2011.

“Economically, he has touched some sacred cows in Egypt, including reforming subsides, which for years observers said was a political death sentence,” Kessler told JNS.org.

One of these reforms is a new “smart card” system to help distribute government-subsidized bread to millions of Egyptians, enabling them to no longer wait in lines while also saving the government hundreds of millions of dollars in waste.

The political stability brought on by El-Sisi has also boosted foreign investors’ and tourists’ confidence in Egypt. The International Monetary Fund predicts that the Egyptian economy will grow 3.5 percent this year.

“We have already seen a number of surprises with El-Sisi,” Kessler said. “The speech at Al-Azhar University, the visit to the Coptic Christian cathedral on Christmas Eve, and of course his complete and utter commitment to defeating jihadis in the Sinai Peninsula and firm hand against the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. … On economics, on combating terrorism and extremism, he has certainly been surprising, and I bet my money on more surprises to come,” Kessler said.
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