For a Western audience, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is a complex figure, who was shunned by the Obama administration. There appear truly pressing, immediate priorities in Egypt, such as developing the economy and combating the avalanche of extremist attempts to overthrow him. Among Middle East and North African territories, Egypt stands out as a primary target, given the cocktail of challenges that position it as a center of radical Islam.

President Sisi faces violent extremist hotbeds in the Sinai Peninsula, and the still-destabilizing influence of the Muslim Brotherhood (a political arm of violent radicals). Most notably, Sisi brought a reality check to the Arab Spring when he led the military overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood government in 2013, ushering a spiritual and cultural Islamic reformation with widespread popular support from Egyptians on a grass-roots level.

Sisi faces more than just militant and political extremists within Egypt’s borders; he is also walking a theological tightrope. Egypt is home to the regressive theocratic influence of the most revered Islamic institution in the Sunni world, Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, which openly views freedom as a “ticking time-bomb.”

Being held hostage intellectually by the grip of Al-Azhar University ensures that there is a constant supply when it comes to producing the next generation of militant and political Islamists.

Egypt also faces extremist infiltration from neighboring Libya, a nation caught in a power vacuum after the murder of its leader, Col. Muammar Gaddafi. This vacuum has been readily filled by Islamic militants, including ISIS.

Upon returning home in April from his first visit to the U.S. since 2013, Sisi faced a series of domestic terror attacks that once again put Egypt in a global spotlight. On Palm Sunday, in April, two suicide bombings in Coptic Christian churches killed more than 45 people and injured another 120. For Egypt, one of the last regional strongholds that still has a vibrant non-Muslim minority population, violent eruptions on major Christian holidays have become routine.

In England, just days after the May 22 Manchester suicide bombing, attention was once again on Egypt where 29 Coptic Christians were gunned down on a bus traveling to a monastery near the city of Minya. The attack was launched by masked terrorists who arrived in three pick-up trucks and opened fire on the passengers, many of whom were children. Egyptian intelligence believes the Minya attack was led by ISIS jihadists based in Libya. In February, the aspiring terrorist caliphate also launched a campaign against Egypt’s Christian population. The Egyptian military responded swiftly with air strikes against terrorist camps, along with a televised warning against sponsored terrorism.

President Sisi’s response to the brutal slaughter of peaceful Christian worshippers is being called rare but should not be surprising, considering the aggressive measures that need to be taken to hold extremism at bay, and to eradicate the threat that local groups pose to the Egyptian people. Coming out of the Riyadh Summit, where President Trump and a host of Muslim nations, including Egypt, agreed to drive out extremism, Sisi’s reaction was necessary.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (front row, far-right) attended the May 21 Arab Islamic American Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, along with U.S. President Donald Trump (front-center). The problems of Islamic extremism and terrorism were much-discussed at the summit. (Photo by Thaer Ghanaim/PPO via Getty Images)

In a war that is equally ideological and kinetic, Muslim nations and others trying to survive the plague of Islamic terrorism will need to be as ruthless as their extremist counterparts. That is something that the warring political factions in the U.S. quickly need to understand. When it comes to regional interests in the Middle East, the priority is combating the most dominant and violent force. If that force wins, human rights are completely off the table. Beyond Egypt, President Trump has received considerable backlash in the U.S. for siding with what are seen as repressive regimes, whether it was hosting Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the White House or engaging with dictators and monarchs during the Riyadh Summit.

In order to bring security to the region, alliances need to look at the real instigators and agents of chaos. There is a metastasizing threat that requires a new coalition of the willing. For a nation to do what it must to survive, it needs the steadfast support of world powers. Step one is annihilating all sources of violent Islam.

Shireen Qudosi is the Director of Muslim Matters, with America Matters.

On February 1, Tharwat Bukhit, a Coptic Christian member of Egypt’s parliament, announced “there are approximately 50 churches in Egypt closed for reasons of security.”

When the “Arab Spring” broke out in 2011, Egypt’s Christians compiled a list of 43 churches that had been shut down by local authorities over the years. This list was given to the prime minister of Egypt at the time, Dr. Essam Sharaf, who said that the churches would be opened as soon as possible. Yet since then, according to Bukhit, “Today, the number of closed churches has grown to almost 50.”

Why are Christian churches being “closed for reasons of security”? Whenever Christians attempt to repair, renovate, or build a church — all of which contradict Islamic law[1] — the same chain of events follows. Local Muslims riot and rampage, and local (Muslim) officials conclude that the only way to prevent “angry youths” from acts of violence is to ban the church, which is then declared a “threat” to security.

Such events have occurred repeatedly throughout Egypt. For instance, Abdel Fattah Sisi, Egypt’s president, agreed to build a memorial church in the village of Al-Our, which was home to 13 of the 21 Christians beheaded in February 2015 by the Islamic State in Libya. The families of the victims still live there. After Islamic prayers on Friday, April 3, 2015, Muslim mobs from Al-Our village violently protested Sisi’s decision. They yelled that they would never allow a church to be built. They chanted, “Egypt is Islamic!” and then attacked a Coptic church with Molotov cocktails and stones. Cars were set on fire, including one belonging to the family of a Christian beheaded by the Islamic State. Several people were seriously hurt.

In Sohag City, a similar chain of events took place. After waiting 44 years, the Christians of Nag Shenouda were issued the necessary permits to build a church. According to a 2015 report, local Muslims rioted and burned down the temporary worship tent. When a Christian tried to hold a religious service in his home, a Muslim mob attacked it. Denied a place to worship, the Christians of Nag Shenouda celebrated Easter 2015 in the street.

The Christians of Nag Shenouda, Egypt celebrated Easter 2015 in the street after local Muslims rioted and burned down their temporary worship tent, and attacked their religious service at a home.

In a separate incident, also after waiting years, the Christians of Gala’ village finally received formal approval to begin restoring their dilapidated church (see pictures here). Soon after, on April 4, 2015, Muslims rioted, hurling stones at Christian homes, businesses and persons. Christian-owned wheat farms were destroyed and their potato crops uprooted. The usual Islamic slogans were shouted: “Islamic! Islamic!” and “There is no God but Allah!”

In July 2015, Muslims suspended prayer in a church in the village of Arab Asnabt. They called for the church to be demolished as part of an effort “to prevent Coptic Christians from practicing their religious rites.”

Repeatedly, Christian leaders accuse local officials of inciting Muslim violence against churches. Muslim leaders then point to this violence to deny the church a permit on the grounds that it has attracted violence.

More recently, a church under construction in the village of Swada was attacked by a mob of at least 400 Muslims, possibly incited by local officials. After the attack, the church was closed by the same officials who had previously granted the necessary permits required for its construction. The 3,000 Coptic Christians in Swada, who make up approximately 35% of the population, do not have even one Coptic Orthodox Church to serve them.

This year, on February 1, the same day as Coptic Christian MP Tharwat Bukhit said nearly 50 churches had been shut down, the priest of St. Rewis Church described how, on the first day Christians met to worship in a fellow Christian’s home that he had transformed into a church, “Muslims prevented them so that the church was closed on the very day it was opened.”

On February 2, Father Lucas Helmi, an official of the Franciscan Order in Egypt, explained how “the closure of St. George’s Church in the village of Hijazah in Qous [shuttered 25 years earlier] goes back to tensions between Coptic and Muslim families in the village, especially the Muslim neighbors around the old church, which is still unfinished because they refused to allow it to be rebuilt after it was demolished.”

During a 25-minute interview on Arabic satellite TV, Bishop Agathon revealed[2] how, after an official council meeting with government leaders on the possibility of building a church, one of the authorities contacted the Islamic sheikhs of the village. The official asked the sheikhs if they stood “with the Coptic church or with the State?”

The sheikhs apparently told the Muslim households to each send one family member to protest the building of the church. Security officials could then point to the “rioting mob” and, as usual, on grounds of security, ban the church.

Raymond Ibrahim, author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War in Christians (a Gatestone Publication, published by Regnery, April 2013), is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and Judith Friedman Rosen Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum

[1] According to the Conditions of Omar, a Medieval Muslim text that delineates the debilitations Christians must accept in order not to be killed by an Islamic state, Christians are commanded “Not to build a church in our city—nor a monastery, convent, or monk’s cell in the surrounding areas—and not to repair those that fall in ruins or are in Muslim quarters; Not to clang our cymbals except lightly and from the innermost recesses of our churches; Not to display a cross on them [churches], nor raise our voices during prayer or readings in our churches anywhere near Muslims…” See Crucified Again, pgs. 24-30

[2] In his May 2015 interview, Bishop Agathon made many remarks accusing the Egyptian government of being behind the persecution of Christians in Egypt—including the rampant kidnapping of Christian children. A translation of his remarks can be read here.

In theory, Egypt is ruled by a former army General who came to power by a coup d’état. In contrast — and in theory, too — Turkey is ruled by a leader who has the popular support of half the voters — a democratically-elected man. But as the West (not always Western leaders) tend to highlight, in bolder-than-ever letters, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s is a tyrannical governance while Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi wins praise.

Erdogan has declared several times that Sisi is an illegitimate dictator, a wording that sent diplomatic relations between Ankara and Cairo into the deep freeze. If Erdogan cared about undemocratic practices in a country, he would reform his own government. Instead, he keeps intimidating and intimidating. He openly challenges the rule of law, including a statement that he will not obey the Constitutional Court rulings he does not like; and taking over critical media outlets — the kind of things any observer would expect from an “Arab dictator.”

Erdogan’s hatred of Sisi is not about a choice between democratic practice or dictatorial rule. It is about Sisi’s fight against radical Islamists, whom Erdogan adores. “Sisi is the most rational Arab leader today,” said Zvi Mazel, a former Israeli Ambassador to Cairo, in a speech last month. “Sisi is fighting radical Islam.”

In the past couple of years, Egyptian newspapers have often suggested that Sisi was fallible. For instance, Al Watan identified factors undermining Sisi, mentioning, notably, “corruption and nepotism” — two unpleasant words that can, in “democratic” Turkey, and even without an addressee, lead to detention and a torturing trial.

In 2015, Sisi mentioned a television presenter who said that he was meeting with [the German company] Siemens and that “he left Alexandria to drown (in the rainwater).” His reaction to that claim was a mere “this is indecent.”

In another public appearance, Sisi apologized for delays in rebuilding churches that were destroyed by Islamists in 2013. He said: “We have taken too long to fix and renovate [churches] that were burned … Please accept our apologies for what happened … by next year there won’t be a single church or house that is not restored.”

In the West, the governance of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (right) is considered tyrannical, while Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (left, hugging Coptic Pope Tawadros II) wins praise.

In another speech, Sisi asked the police to tolerate dissent. He also apologized to Egyptian lawyers after one of them was physically assaulted by a policeman.

When hardcore football fans chanted against Mohamed Hussein al-Tantawi, a former army chief and former defense minister, Sisi phoned into a television show to defend Tantawi, instead of telling the prosecutors that the football fans are “terrorists” who should be arrested and tried — as would happen in Turkey.

In January, a day after a cartoonist was arrested for mocking him, Sisi said that he does not mind criticism, and that it is his job to placate disgruntled youths. Cartoonist Islam Gawish was released without being charged. Sisi said:

“I’m not upset at Gawish or anyone … If I accept being in such a position, I must bear all the consequences. There is no such thing as all people agreeing on something … Every day, 90 million people in Egypt find many things that make them uncomfortable.”

Also in January, Sisi’s use of a red carpet for his motorcade provoked criticism in Egypt. No doubt, cars carrying Sisi and other officials that drove down the red carpet looked funny. Many commentators mocked the extravaganza as the president was making a speech in which he warned that the state could not continue subsidizing water and electricity bills for low-income families. One activist accused Sisi of “trampling on the people’s money.” Youssef al-Husseini, a television presenter, asked, “How could you reach such a level of hypocrisy by rolling out red carpets on the streets for the president’s motorcade? Could we not have spent the money on buying duvets for people freezing in the cold?”

None of that is thinkable in Erdogan’s Turkey. A total of 1,845 people in Turkey have been investigated, detained or prosecuted for “insulting” Erdogan since he was elected in August 2014.

Meanwhile, since October, the death toll in bomb attacks in Turkey’s capital, Ankara, alone has reached 169.

Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a Turkish columnist for the Hürriyet Daily and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.