Congress subcommittee highlights Egypt's role in combating terrorism

Congress Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade held a hearing session on the terrorist threats of the so-called Islamic State on the international security.

Remarks by Robert Ford, former US ambassador to Syria and Secretary General of the Atlantic Paliamentary Group on Terror Combat Walid Faris included positive indications about the role of Egypt in combating terrorism, especially in Sinai.

Robert discussed the ideology of the Islamic State and how our understanding of that ideology should affect our strategy against this brutal organization.

"I spent five years in Iraq, mostly at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, and the American effort against the Islamic State's predecessor organizations, al-Qaida in Iraq and later the Islamic State in Iraq, was a major issue for the US. Later I served at theU.S. Embassy in Damascus when we saw the Islamic State in Iraq dispatch its elements into Syria as the unrest there became violent in the second half of 2011."

"The Islamic State has attracted many younger ideologues within the Salifi-jihad sphere. We shouldn't place huge hopes on establishment Muslim
establishments like Egypt's Azhar as being influential with these younger writers and thinkers. Rather, younger thinkers and imams who have both scholarly credentials and street credibility will best be able to undermine Islamic State standing among some of its followers.

Ambassador Faris, on his part, said United States Congress can and should restructure the war with ISIS by reorganizing U.S resources in the war of ideas. The goals of such an effort include officially identifying the ideology animating ISIS and its Jihadi allies around the world:
(a) enabling the American public and, with the assistance of other legislatures
worldwide, the wider Western public, to be aware of such ideology;
(b) sending a message to the communities where ISIS is currently active and those where
it is planning on penetrating, particularly in the Arab and Muslim world, that the U.S.
and the international community have been able to isolate this ideology from civil
societies’ natural drive towards freedom and moderation; and
(c) creating an international intellectual consensus against Jihadism.

For this endeavor we urge Congress to hold a series of hearings on Jihadism, both the ideology
and its strategies, and invite a wide array of national and international experts, but also public
figures, from many countries targeted by ISIS and its Jihadi allies. For this purpose it would be
important, particularly in order to dismiss the false charges of political Islamophobia, to invite
the highest authority of Sunni Islam, Grand Imam of al Azhar Sheikh Ahmad al Tayyeb, to address Congress, along with a number of Muslim clerics who have publically testified against the very indoctrination machine producing the terrorists. Let Congress uncover the truth of this machine in front of the eyes of the U.S. public and international community.