Al-Sissi on shaky ground

By Ephraim Herra, ISRAEL HAYOM

The spokesperson for the Islamic State group, Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, called for jihad and martyrdom during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which began two weeks ago, and threatened to annihilate the “infidels.” Indeed, members of Islamic State’s Sinai province answered the call and carried out a coordinated and lethal attack on multiple Egyptian army and police outposts. Of course, this wasn’t the first attack in Sinai: Hundreds of Egyptian soldiers and policemen have been killed in the past two years, ever since Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi led a successful coup against the Muslim Brotherhood government.

The activities of the “caliphate” have not been confined to the Sinai Peninsula. A month ago the group urged retaliation against the judges who sentenced several of its members to death, a call that was swiftly answered when the district attorney, the driving force behind the hundreds of death sentences against Islamic State and Brotherhood members, was assassinated in the heart of Cairo. Islamic State aspires to impose political and legal Islam on the entire world. A necessary stage of this plan is the elimination of the Muslim states, because for followers of classical Islam borders dividing the Muslim nation are akin to heresy. One of the group’s primary goals is to topple the regimes fighting orthodox Islam, chief among them the Egyptian military regime.

To this point El-Sissi has focused his efforts against the Muslim Brotherhood. Since his ascension to power, some 1,400 members of the Muslim Brotherhood have been killed, roughly 15,000 have been wounded and approximately 40,000 have been imprisoned for varying periods of time. He has been behind death sentences for hundreds of them, shut down thousands of illegal mosques, outlawed preachers unaffiliated with the regime from giving sermons, and has ordered the confiscation of books by religious scholars who espouse jihad. El-Sissi also directed scholars from Al-Azhar University to implement a “religious revolution,” the crux of which calls for abandoning the vision of imposing Islam on the world. His campaign reached new heights last week, when nine senior Brotherhood members were killed in “cold blood” following the wide-scale attack in Sinai. The group responded by labeling el-Sissi a “butcher” and called on the Egyptian people to destroy his “oppressive, tyrannical regime” and “take back Egypt.”

It appears Egypt is again on the verge of civil war and that el-Sissi’s odds of winning it are not high. Firstly, the Egyptian public, in contrast to the picture often painted in the media, supports orthodox Islam. As evidence — in the democratic elections held two years ago, close to 40% of voters supported the Muslim Brotherhood and over 25% voted for the Salafi Al-Nour party. Some 75% of Egyptians want Shariah (religious law) to be made state law. Secondly, the Egyptian economy is in dire straits and unemployment is rising, specifically among younger Egyptians. The state has kept its head above water thanks only to the billions of dollars it receives from Gulf states. Tourism, which was an important source of revenue, has taken a drastic hit since the fall of the Mubarak regime, and the recent terrorist attacks are expected to make matters even worse. The public is on edge, evidenced by the nearly 400 economy-centric demonstrations held in the past three months alone.

Unlike the West, however, el-Sissi has a thorough understanding of the objectives of orthodox Islam and is trying to implement a deep-rooted revolution. But in the face of the people’s popular support for Islam, and the economic distress the country is under, his fate is liable to resemble those of Anwar Sadat and the district attorney. Time will tell, but in any case we can expect the terrorist attacks and bitter clashes to persist. Israel’s concern over the events unfolding across its western border is more than justified.