Egypt’s leader Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi makes ambitious, controversial call for reform in Islam

Egypt’s president opened the new year with a dramatic call for a “revolution” in Islam to reform interpretations of the faith entrenched for hundreds of years, which he said have made the Muslim world a source of “destruction” and pitted it against the rest of the world.

The speech was Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi’s boldest effort yet to position himself as a moderniser of Islam. His professed goal is to purge the religion of extremist ideas of intolerance and violence that fuel groups like al-Qaeda and Islamic State – and lie behind Tuesday’s attack in Paris on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo that killed 12 people.

But those looking for the “Muslim Martin Luther” bringing a radical Reformation of Islam may be overreaching – and making a false comparison to begin with. Sisi is clearly seeking to impose change through the state, using government religious institutions like the 1,000-year-old al-Azhar, one of the most eminent centres of Sunni Muslim thought and teaching.

Al-Azhar’s vision for change, however, is piecemeal, and conservative, focusing on messaging and outreach but wary of addressing deeper and more controversial issues.

Al-Azhar officials tout a YouTube channel just launched to reach out to the young, mimicking radicals’ successful social media outreach to disenfranchised youth. They proudly point out that clerics in the videos wear suits, not al-Azhar’s traditional robes and turbans, to be more accessible.

Young people “have a negative image toward this garb,” said Mohie Eddin Affifi, an al-Azhar official. “As soon as they see it they don’t listen.”