By MIKE EVANSEgyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi casts his vote during the presidential election in Cairo, Egypt March 26, 2018(photo credit: THE EGYPTIAN PRESIDENCY/HANDOUT VIA REUTERS)
President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi of Egypt deserves a Nobel Peace Prize, along with the Presidential Medal of Freedom award, for saving Egypt from a human rights catastrophe.Egypt is a prime location because it borders Israel, Libya and Sudan, and shares maritime borders with Greece, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda, ISIS and other terror groups would be waging war, using Egypt as a staging area.Only one man is responsible for preventing an Islamic State and a civil war in Egypt: President al-Sisi. For him to take on the Muslim Brotherhood in his own country was one of the most courageous acts of leadership in human history – indeed, an Arab “Winston Churchill” moment.You may recall that on January 25, 2011, thousands of protesters packed Tahrir Square in Cairo. As a result, Muslim Brotherhood member Mohammed Morsi was elevated to the role of president. He was ousted by Sisi in 2013.The world watched in horror as what was called the Arab Spring swept through Egypt. Millions of demonstrators took to the streets in every major city across the Middle East. More than 90 police stations were set afire. This was the same protest that plagued Syria, creating a human catastrophe, and costing the lives of more than 350,000 Syrians.What would be the condition of the world if that had happened in Egypt, which has a population of 100 million? Without a doubt, the war on terror would have been lost. A disaster beyond anyone’s imagination would have materialized in the Middle East and soon threatened the world. Thirty to forty million refugees and more than a million deaths would have likely been the result.The United States was asleep when the Muslim Brotherhood was recruiting and fundraising on her shores. Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, the blind cleric who masterminded the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 was a member of that group.In 2001, the ringleader of the September 11 attack was Mohammad Attah, also a member of the Brotherhood. He helped hijack American Airlines Flight 11, the plane that crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.WHERE IN the Middle East can a Muslim ally with such moral clarity be found; one who will stand so strongly, not only against the Brotherhood, but that aggressively initiates a re-education program in the mosques and schools of Egypt? Where could one find an ally such as this who is fighting a war of terror against ISIS in the Sinai with Israel? Or a Muslim ally who has mobilized hundreds of thousands of his fellow countrymen as policemen to defend Christians, even with their own lives? During the 2017 Christmas celebrations, Sisi assigned troops outfitted in combat gear to protect worshippers at churches in Cairo and towns across Egypt.Egypt’s defense of Christians has been a major blow to ISIS and its supporters. One only has to look at what happened to the Christian population in Iraq when that terrorist organization came to power in some areas. Christians were annihilated, as they were in ISIS-controlled areas of Syria. More than one million Christians have fled that country because of targeted Christian persecution.
What happened in Iraq and Syria was an absolute disaster, the brutality suffered by Christians in those countries unspeakable.Despite all Sisi has done, regardless of his moral clarity, the US State Department and the liberal Left media continue to slander him.They falsely claim that Sisi is not a defender of human rights. Those claims are true, as well, for US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for their stands against terrorism.Let me remind you of the last time a pro-Western Muslim leader was treated in such a manner: it was Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last shah of Iran. A liberal Left president who believed that weak US allies were in America’s best interests did everything humanly possible to undermine the shah.DOZENS OF diplomats and virtually every major Iranian concerning the matter were interviewed by me personally. Those included Ardeshir Zahedi and Farah Diba Pahlavi, the widow of the shah, former French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, and US General Robert “Dutch” Hauser, the deputy commander in chief of the U.S. European Command who was dispatched to Iran to try to stabilize the country.D’Estaing told me President Jimmy Carter thought the radical Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was a cleric who would be good for human rights, and stated his own reaction:“We were humanly shocked by the way Carter spoke because we knew at the end it would lead to the torture or the killing of the shah. And he [Carter] was not embarrassed at all; no, no, he spoke very lightly of a man that we supported very strongly.…He [Carter] was a bastard of conscience, a moralist, who treats with total lightness the fact of abandoning a man that we had supported together.”When I interviewed Her Majesty Farah Pahlavi in March 2008, I was shown her guest book with an inscription: “Thank you for all your wonderful hospitality.” It was signed, “President Jimmy Carter” and “Rosalynn Carter.”Princess Ashraf, Pahlavi’s twin sister, put her impressions of the president on paper. She wrote, “I looked at his pale face. I thought his smile was artificial, his eyes icy – and I hoped I could trust him.” Yet again, it was apparent that neither Carter nor his advisers were fully apprised of the growing unrest.Washington put pressure on the shah to ease his control and allow more political freedom. This prompted the release of more than three hundred political prisoners, relaxed censorship, provided freedom of religion, and overhauled the court system, which had the unforeseen side-effect of allowing greater freedom for opposition groups to meet and organize.IN MY INTERVIEW with Queen Farah, she related that the shah was concerned about Carter’s demands for human rightsconcessions, tying them to foreign aid and threatening to withhold spare parts for Iran’s military aircraft.Her husband said to her, “Who knows what sort of calamity he [Carter] may unleash upon the world?” And, she said, the shah’s worst nightmares would come to pass: the USSR would invade Afghanistan; Iraq would take advantage of a weakened Iran and invade; and Khomeini would be successful with his call for an Islamic Revolution in Iran.The same godless liberal Left moral relativists who forced the shah out of power are still operating today, and are hard at work to depose President Sisi, as well as Trump and Netanyahu. Sadly, those liberals have a difficult time seeing moral issues clearly. They reject absolute standards of good and evil, right and wrong. In their worldview, man is capable of perfection, human nature is on a path towards enlightenment, and the concept of original sin is primitive.One need only look back at the conditions in Libya and Iraq where the liberal Left media was determined to prod the US into a self-righteous war. They believed that human rights would be improved for Muslims; instead the region became a living hell where millions suffered and died.Those same humanists believe the lie that bad actions must be blamed on societal, psychological, or economic circumstances. Moral relativists despise those who understand the nature of evil. Secular humanists make excuses for evil, or worse, deny its existence, or coddle it by refusing to confront it. Consequently, they feed it. Terrorists kill the body; God-hating, humanist, liberal leftists kill the soul. They see jihadists not as terrorists, but as freedom fighters, little George Washington types who simply need tolerance and support.The writer is a #1 The New York Times bestselling author with 80 published books. He is the founder of Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem of which the late Shimon Peres, Israel’s ninth president, was the chair.
