Radical Islam: The President of Egypt Gets It

It was the first time, I actually heard an international leader and a Muslim, express the scope and intent of radical Islam.  That leader -- Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi -- put it concisely into the following words of a speech he gave before a gathering of imams back in November:

"Is it possible 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? Impossible!  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… because this umma [international Muslim community] is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost – and it is being lost by our own hands."

Clearly, he understands that radical Islam wants to destroy the non-Islam world.  But, he also knows that radical Islam is willing to kill Muslims that won't follow their radical form of religion as well.  He explains that the problem of radicalization is welling up from within the religion itself, through the radical teachings of all too many imams.  As a result, Islam, as it is known today, "is being lost by our own hands."

That is the key element of the speech.  Simply because it exposes the fact that radical Islam cannot be stopped by a top-down attempt to conduct battles that eliminate already-radicalized soldiers.   Soldiers who believe that killing and dying in the name of Allah is their pathway to heaven.

Instead, we must focus on destroying radical Islam from the bottom-up by stopping the teaching process by which children are being radicalized.   Until then, for every one we kill on the battlefield -- no matter what they call themselves (ISIS, Taliban, Al Qaeda, or whatever) --  there will always be more who, radicalized as children, are willing to kill in their place.  One sure way to end this is to convince Saudis and others who fund these radical schools that their actions are ultimately hurting Islam itself.

References:

Egypt's President Urges Muslim Clerics to End Violent Islamic Ideology, Lead Peaceful 'Religious Revolution' in Groundbreaking Speech:

Madrassas: https://www.google.com/search?q=Madrassas&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Analyses - Madrassas | PBS - Saudi Time Bomb:  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/saudi/analyses/madrassas.html