There have been two historic speeches given in the past year. You’ve probably not heard of either one because they were given by foreign leaders in Egypt and Britain and have nothing at all to do with our presidential election next year.
It’s time for another break from the who-trumps-Trump ongoing media circus so that we can pay attention to events that might actually affect our national security, foreign relations and national future.
The predicate for these speeches appeared in The Economist, a liberal British magazine, in its July 5, 2014 issue. It noted that the fruits of the “Arab spring” had rotted and ended by engendering more autocracy and fanaticism. It said that “…only the Arabs can reverse their civilizational decline.” It said that Islam is at the core of the Arabs’ deep troubles.
The first of the two historic speeches that followed was given on January 1 by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. In it, al-Sisi called radical Islam to account.
He did so in what would be shocking, intolerable terms if they had been spoken by a non-Muslim. His central theme was the insanity of Islam trying to set itself apart from – and to conquer – the rest of the world. His words flew in the face of all the terrorist network leaders saying, “It is inconceivable that the wrong ideas that we sacralize should make the entire umma [Muslim community] a source of concern, danger, killing, and destruction for the whole world. This is not possible.”