Holy Toledo, I see that my last posting here was August 2, over three weeks ago! Maybe I should change the name of this blog to The Monthly Decaf...
What I've said more than a few times in the past I fear is true: My concern to be scrupulous about a posting -- not only to back up (or amplify) key claims with links, but also to flesh out the "connective tissue" (as Frank Gaffney has put it) amongst the complex of dots being palpated -- inevitably causes me to spend more time at the drafting board than I wanted to, and thus inhibits me the next time. If I could only learn to be punchy with my postings...
Let's try it now (don't hold your breath):
Egypt: President lets Muslim cleric who promotes violence against women and infidels to preach at Alexandria mosque
So runs a headline Robert Spencer put up on Jihad Watch today. The first thing I thought was, "So much for the new and improved Egyptian leader, the Moderate Al-Sisi". Then I see Robert's editorial remarks, which even surprised me, a long-time Spencer critic, with their retrograde learning curve:
Sisi generally stands against the Salafists, but he also recognizes that they constitute a major portion of Egypt’s population. So he, like many other Egyptian Presidents before him, has to practice steam control, allowing them to have their way enough to pacify them somewhat and keep the whole country from exploding.
The first error that glares at us (or at which we should glare) is the Counter-Jihad howler Robert seriously employs, "Salafists" (a term as misleading as the previously fashionable one, "Wahhabists", and possessing no useful function beyond what other terms offer -- terms often (and aptly) derided by the Counter-Jihad: "extremists", "radicals", "Islamists"), about which we could ask rhetorically -- "What's a 'Salafist' and how is he or she different from any standard-issue garden-variety Muslim?"
More broadly, while Robert may be technically and superficially correct in his description quoted above, he provides not even one sentence indicating the deeper problem -- the stealth jihad. Does Robert honestly think Sisi is not a stealth jihadist? That he's a sincere "reformer" with a zebibah on his forehead who reveres Mohammed, Islam and the Koran? (I.e., that he's the same square-circle any Muslim is whom one is claiming just wants to have a sandwich...).
Not to mention that Robert's own Jihad Watch has a growing paper trail indicating the dubiousness of Sisi's so-called "reform".
And that Robert's off-and-on-again colleague, Andrew Bostom, about five years ago collected information indicating Sisi's stealth jihad. As my former self put it on a Jihad Watch comments thread back in early January of 2015:
On Sisi, in another JW thread I adverted to an important Andrew Bostom report from August that provides sound interpretation of evidence that Sisi is a normative Islamic jihadist and not some kind of “reformist” (and shame on any JWer for entertaining the notion that someone as learned in Islam as Sisi must be could possibly be a “reformist”!).
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On second thought, I could just keep my blog name, The Daily Decaf, and blithely post only once a month (or once in a blue crescent moon), under the Spencerian fiat that what is monthly can (without any explanation needed) be called "daily" -- just as Al-Sisi can be called a "bulwark against political Islam" (as Robert indeed, with a straight face, has) .
