Dalia Ziada and Her Struggle Against the Muslim Brotherhood Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript is an edited version version of a transcript created using AI technology and may not reflect 100% accuracy.

The video can be found here.

Sarah: Good afternoon. I hope all of our Jewish listeners had a very happy Hanukkah, despite the horrific tragedy in Australia. I want to wish all of our Christian listeners a very Merry Christmas. I want to welcome back to our program the wonderful Dahlia Ziada. Dahlia is Egyptian-born. She was educated at Tufts University. She’s wonderfully bright, competent, and a very capable young political analyst specializing in the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Dahlia received degrees at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University. She’s published many articles, many papers, and books analyzing the political relationships and geographical conflicts in the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean. She’s been a member of several regional and international organizations and is often seen on many TV broadcasts, including I-24 News, where I get to know her intimately. She has authored, among other things, the book The Curious Case of the Three-Legged Wolf, Egypt, Military Islam, and Democracy, and is working on a current book, The Coalition of Odds, which will examine the changing world order and a re-examination of all the shifting coalitions. Dahlia is also a global coordinator at the Institute of the Study of Global Anti-Semitism. First of all, Dahlia, welcome back. The events of October 7, 2023, radically changed your life. Can you describe what happened to you at that day?

Dahlia: Thank you so much, Sarah, and thank you to Emet for hosting me. It’s a pleasure to be with you back again and with your audience. Happy New Year, Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to everyone. I celebrate the new year too. Sorry, mainly because it’s also a new year in my life. It’s my birthday. So it’s always an interesting time of the year for me on a very, very personal level. Thank you, Sarah. So, oh, yeah, thank you for your question. Unfortunately, like everyone in the region, my life before October 7 was one thing, and after October 7 is a completely different thing, except that the main line of fighting against extremism and against anti-Semitism and for Arab-Israel dialogue and Muslim-Jewish dialogue has remained the main theme of my life over this time. So, before October 7, I grew up in Egypt. I was born in Egypt, grew up in Egypt, lived there most of my life, only traveled to study and went back. I always loved living there despite all the criticism, despite all the difficulties, despite all the lack of freedoms. And so, but at the end of the day, it’s my home country. However, unfortunately, when October 7 happened, it was my first shock, my first real shock of how our society has been radicalized to a point that became threatening to the lives of the people who are calling for peace, like myself.

So I was leading the think tank when October 7 happened. I usually appear in the media to comment on geopolitical issues and give analysis on the political situation in the region. So I was invited to do just that after October 7, and a few days before the start of the war in Gaza, the war on Hamas in Gaza. So I just spoke, I just told the truth. I was very honest when I was asked, what do you think of October 7? I believe the host expected somehow me to say, oh, it was great and celebrate just like everyone else was celebrating it. Because, believe it or not, unfortunately, people were celebrating the brutality of Hamas on October 7 in Arab streets and in Egyptian streets. So I just said the truth, and I said, this is a terrorist attack and Hamas is a terrorist organization. It’s totally unacceptable and unjustified, and Israel has the right to defend itself like any other country would do in such a situation.

To my surprise, this stirred a horrible backlash against me from radical Islamists who wanted to kill me, like they literally went to my family’s house looking for me. I miraculously was not there at that hour, and up to the Egyptian state that actually started attacking me and coming after me and wanted to imprison me simply for saying that, for saying this very simple truth about Israel and about Hamas. So I eventually had to escape. I came to the US. It’s the familiar place to me. It’s where I lived in the past, worked and studied. I came here thinking that I left the bad guys behind. You know, the radicals are only there in the Middle East. They are not here in the US. But to my surprise, this was not the case. Unfortunately, they are everywhere here doing exactly the same damage they did to my home country, Egypt, to the United States. Then I took on myself the mission. I thought it’s a message. It’s all destined that God puts me here now to fight against these groups and to show how evil they are, the same way I did when I was in the Middle East. So this is exactly what I’ve been doing for the past 2 years since I left and came to the U.S.

Sarah: You know, and you’ve been speaking on a lot of college campuses. How is your reception among Islamic students?

Dahlia: So, I actually in the last academic year alone, I spoke at 59 campuses. This is a great number. I never imagined I would do that because also the content of my speech was not just a random like talk or friendly talk. So it was very tough. It was about educating them about the real Middle East. It’s a crash course, a small course about the real Middle East that I know, that I lived in my whole life. It’s so interesting that actually most of the students, including Arabs, Muslims, Islamists who come even from radical backgrounds, and so all agreed on the facts that I stated, except that they had difficulty reconciling their, especially Arab and Muslim students, they had difficulty reconciling what they have been taught about the Middle East, about the legitimacy of Israel, about the legitimacy of terrorist organizations fighting against Israel, like Hamas and its sisters, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, ISIS al-Qaeda, and all of these organizations.

They couldn’t know how to reconcile this with their sympathy with the war in Gaza, with the humanitarian situation in Gaza, which I think was the main challenge for them. I was able somehow to help them find this compromise to understand that, yes, war is ugly, war is bad, but we have to understand why this war led to so many casualties. It’s not because a war is happening on terrorism, but because Hamas purposefully used these people as human shields. We saw the leaders of Hamas coming, Haniyeh himself, before he was assassinated. He came out and publicly said in the early days of the war, he said, we want more blood, more blood in Gaza, because this blood is the fuel for our movement. Can you believe it? It’s crazy. It’s crazy. This is the man who is supposed to be the political leader in Gaza. So it’s his mandate to protect the people in Gaza, but he actually is using them as fuel for Hamas and their Islamist movement in general, like the bigger, broader Islamist movement. So this is the situation we are in. There is a lot of misunderstanding about the Middle East. People judge the situation in the Middle East through the lens of, through, let’s say, the European gaze or the American gaze, not through the Middle Eastern gaze. So when they start to see this Middle Eastern gaze through me, the students in particular, they started to understand, yes, we need a different understanding. We now knew something different from what we have been taught about the region. So I think this is the most interesting part of my work in the past 2 years, actually.

Sarah: Right, to penetrate through the layers of socialization and to let people know that, yes, we are all human. So the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical Islamist tentacles have actually entered into your life here in the United States. How would you describe them operating within the United States?

Dahlia: Oh, first of all, let’s make the obvious distinction. Maybe it’s not obvious to many people between regular Muslims and radical Islamists. For most of the people, when they look at the Muslim communities, they think they are either one of 2 groups, either Sunni and Shia or extremists and moderate. I even don’t use the word moderate. It’s not accurate. So this is the main categories people give to Muslims in the Western world. But actually, Muslims and Islamists fall on a very wide spectrum that goes from on the very far left, the liberal Muslims, reformist Muslims. We have even secular Muslims and also reformist Muslims like myself who still hold on to the religion, but they want to reform it so it fits our modern life, Sufi Muslims. Then in the middle, we have the overwhelming majority of Muslims who are the mainstream Muslims. But being in the middle does not necessarily mean that they are moderate. Actually, most of them are so brainwashed by the people on the right. So on the right, we have, on the right of the spectrum, we have the radical Islamists, ranging from first, the official Islamists, institutions run by governments in certain Islamic countries and Arab countries, mainly to control people through religious piety. Then we have political Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, and we have political jihadist groups like Hamas.

Then we have, as we go further to the right, we have the Wahhabis, or some people call them the Salafis. They are almost the same. Then, at the very end, we have the Salafi jihadism or jihadists, groups like ISIS, al-Qaeda, HTS, all of these groups. All the famous terrorist organizations, I would say, on the very far right of the spectrum. So as you can see, it’s a very wide spectrum of Muslims and Islamists. We cannot put all of them in 1 category. What happened, unfortunately, in the past, let’s say, 4 decades at least, or 5 decades, we saw huge immigrations from the Middle East to Western countries on several occasions. First, in the 1960s and 70s, after the Islamic Revolution, winning over Iran, the rise of Islamism, many people just couldn’t stay in the region, and they had to flee. More secular people, yes, they are Muslims or have ex-Muslims, like have Muslim background or so, but they just couldn’t keep up with the lifestyle there, with a new Islamization of the region, kind of, and they fled to Western countries. These generations were easily able to integrate into the Western culture because it was not very foreign to them from their culture in their countries, where they lived in the Middle East at that time. Because many people also may not know, many of the Arab countries were very liberal, very, very liberal. In Egypt, our most liberal era was between the 1930s, let’s say, up to the 1960s.

The most liberal, culturally liberal, I mean, the most liberal. It’s so this happens the same thing for Iran, the same thing for Iraq and other Arab countries. So this is the first generation. The second generation that came after, like since the 1980s, and so with the rise of the Wahhabist movement in the region, and then also the rise of the political Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and their ideology, they started to come in large numbers after that to Western countries in waves under the flag of freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and things like that. They introduced themselves as being oppressed in their home countries as opposition groups. The Muslim Brotherhood actually members in the U.S. today claim that they were oppressed for political reasons, not because they were a destructive force in Egypt or other Arab countries. That’s why they immigrated.

So when they immigrated, they immigrated with this poisonous ideology with them. They also immigrated this political Islamist ideology. What they couldn’t achieve in the Middle East, which is destroying the nation-states there and substituting it with an Islamic caliphate system, they decided to do in the West. Actually, they found that it is easier for them to do it in the West because the Western societies are open societies. They are more flexible, more open. They believe in freedoms, and thus, they don’t know much about Islam. They cannot differentiate between Muslims and Islamists. So it was like the perfect atmosphere for them to spread their agenda. They actually wrote a plan in 1991. It’s called an explanatory memorandum of the Muslim Brotherhood Strategy in the United States, in North America. Okay, so people can find it online. It’s already available since the Holy Land Foundation trial. But it’s so interesting. It just details what the Muslim Brotherhood want to achieve in the US and in the West in general, which is sabotaging the Western civilization from within, destroying the Western civilization from within in order to empower their radical Islamist ideology and build their own caliphate system.

So this is the plan. I think 40 years since this was written so far, they are doing really well. They are progressing on their plan. The plan is doing really well so far. I mean, look around you. They are everywhere in government, in policy positions, influencing policy, in non-governmental organizations, non-profits, and so, and even on American campuses, dictating research and other issues. So they do exist, and they are succeeding.

Sarah: Right. So, how would you say the civilizational jihad, which they really aim for, is in conflict with Western liberal democracy? We have within Western liberal democracy freedoms that we cherish, freedom of religion, freedom of speech. How are they using those freedoms, and what kind of roadblocks, what kind of obstacles should we be aware of within the United States and the Western world?

Dahlia: Sure. So based on the documents of the Muslim Brotherhood, the strategies they have written themselves 40 years ago, their main goal is Tamkeen or empowerment, is to empower Islamism in the Western world. How to do that? Through destroying the Western civilization. The process of destroying this Western civilization is what they call a civilizational jihad, which means it’s not the traditional form of jihad, of violent jihad. They are not carrying weapons and just going around killing the Western people in order to replace them by other people, but they are doing something more dangerous, which is brainwashing the minds of Westerners and making them adopt their own causes and adopt their own perception of the world. In the process, use them as fuel, as a power, as a force to destroy the West from within.

Actually, the most interesting part of this process, the civilizational jihad, is how they utilized the so-called Palestinian cause or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in this process. It’s really, really interesting because what happened is that, first of all, like one of the main goals that they also stated in their explanatory memorandum of how to succeed in this mission is to create coalitions with non-Muslims in these societies. Because at the end of the day, the number of the Muslim community, no matter how big it is, it’s not an influential force in a country like the United States, for example. They need to build coalitions with other groups. So for so long, one of their main targets was the progressive movement, the democratic progressive movement. Why? Because it has been very successful in the past 10 years. It’s growing, it’s successful, gaining a lot of traction among the young people. They tried several times to attach themselves to this progressive movement. One, during the momentum or the trend of climate change, the few years where this was a big, trendy thing, and they did not succeed.

Once again, when the LGBTQ and transgender and all of these issues were a big, trendy issue, they tried also to attach themselves with the progressive left and they couldn’t do it. Then, when October 7 happened and the Gaza war started, and now they have a good material of humanitarian cause to attract people from the left, you know, people who believe in rights and so, they used this very well. Who resonated with that or who actually responded to this? Among the progressive movement, which is huge, the radical left within the progressive movement. So the radical left within the progressive movement, as we all know, are Marxists. They adopt the Marxist ideology. They want to destroy the U.S., as we know it, the liberal democracy that is called the United States, and replace it with a socialist system, which is exactly similar to the goal of the radical Islamists of destroying the liberal democracy, the United States, and replacing it with the caliphate system.

So somehow they found a match. They found a way. They also value violent resistance. They also value this idea of the oppressed fighting against the oppressor and being justified for anything they do. Framing Hamas as freedom fighters and glorifying their violence resonated really well with the radical leftists within the progressive movement. Eventually, we saw, unfortunately, this merging that happened between the radical left and the radical Islamists in the past 2 years and the huge coordination on several levels, starting with attacking Israel up to attacking the United States itself, attacking the US as an imperialist colonialist power or whatever they say. They started to attack the or they ended up with attacking the US itself and calling for its destruction, which is really interesting because this is one of the main goals of the Muslim Brotherhood in their early explanatory memorandum of the 1990s.

Sarah: Yeah, so we see within the radical left, there’s the LGBTQ movement. What would happen to queers in Gaza?

Dahlia: Oh my God, actually, this is also, this shows you how, I will use the word naive, but I don’t mean it as an insult, but as not appropriately educated, the radical leftists are. They know nothing about the world. They know nothing about at least the Middle East or the situation in Gaza or Hamas, this radical group that they align with. Many of the LGBTQ people within the radical left, for example, they don’t know that if they step into Gaza for a few minutes, like it will take them 5 minutes to be killed for nothing, for nothing other than being an LGBTQ person. Let me tell you, actually, a personal experience I had with a lesbian woman here in DC. I met her, and she’s actually very much pro-Hamas, pro, you know, all this narrative. I told her about that. I told her, your life will be in danger if you spend 1 day with Hamas. Do you know that? Or if they found you, you are one of their targets. She said, I don’t care. She said, I don’t care, which makes me, I don’t, I really can’t understand them, you know. They don’t know. They don’t know. They have not been in such a situation where their life is really threatened by these radical Islamist groups. Thus, they don’t know. They cannot understand what we’re talking about. You know, it’s like you’re talking to someone about a Marxist who is not interested in your writing.

Sarah: They don’t know the Middle East. It’s all true. So you recently called a phenomenon, quote, the Palestinization of American politics. Can you explain that a bit?

Dahlia: Oh, yes. Actually, it’s a process. It’s within the civilizational jihad process that we spoke about that the Muslim Brotherhood is using to, or implementing to infiltrate into the American society and destroy it from within. So over the years, as larger numbers of Muslims immigrated to the West, by the way, most of the Muslim communities in the West until the 1990s, and so when the Muslim Brotherhood started to take the lead, they were just normal individuals practicing privately. They never even showed their religion in public or wore hijab or prayed in the middle of the street, the same way we see some pray in the UK, Europe, and so it’s even against the Islamic teachings to pray in the street. It’s so weird. So it’s so weird to me when I see it, you know, but I know they are doing this on purpose to show power, to project power, to project the, to say that, hey, we occupied this land, we are the ones in control, and we are the ones who are deciding if you go to work or not to go to work or and so on, you know. So in this process, in this civilizational jihadist process, one of the main ideologues of the Muslim Brotherhood, his name is Yusuf al-Qaradawi. I’m sure many people know about him. He used to live in Qatar until 2 years ago, when he died.

He was leading the Union of Islamic Scholars in Doha, Qatar, which is purely a Muslim Brotherhood entity funded by Qatar that speaks in the name of Muslims. So he was one of the main fatwa makers for the Muslim Brotherhood abroad, meaning outside the Middle East, who live in Western societies. He made even a series of videos instructing them on what to do and what not to do, a series of teachings, box. By the way, the videos were broadcast on Al Jazeera. No surprise, you know. A number of broadcast, a number of teachings like box and notebooks and monologues and so on how Muslims should behave in the West. So when the Muslim Brotherhood started to take lead of the general Muslims in the West and speak in their name, create Islamic centers for them, and so, Yusuf al-Qaradawi started to instruct them how to unify Muslims and non-Muslims also around the causes of Muslims. So one of his very interesting teachings was about using Palestine, as he calls it, or the Palestinian cause, as a glue to bring the Muslims together in Western societies, because he knew that Muslims in Western societies are very diverse. They are not all Arabs. They are not all Asians. They have different backgrounds.

To unify them, he needed something, a cause. The cause, according to Al-Qaradawi, should be Palestine. Actually, this is exactly what has been happening by the Muslim Brotherhood since then, in a process which I like to call the Palestinization of the Western world, because we have reached to a moment today, which also is a point of success for the Muslim Brotherhood, that the Western world today is divided on whether to support Israel or to support Hamas. Imagine we got to this point now that the Palestinian cause or the Palestine issue has become an issue in Western societies, upon which Americans are divided. Why you’re not divided over Russia, Ukraine? Why you’re not divided over China, Taiwan, or any other conflict in the world? Why exactly this conflict? By the way, a conflict that, when you look at the map, it’s so tiny. It’s so tiny, really. Why are you focused on this and leaving everything else? Why is this causing this level of polarization in Western societies? This is the scary part. This is the Palestinization part I’m talking about. So we are seeing it as we speak, right now happening around us. I hope people will wake up before it’s too late.

Sarah: Thank you. Okay, so on October 7, Ahmed al-Tayyib from El-Azhar University had issued some fatwas. How did they differ from those of the Muslim Brotherhood? I know you didn’t agree with them at all, Dahlia. So how did you respond to these fatwas?

Dahlia: You know, actually, I am so shocked about Al-Azhar’s statements because, and Sheikh Imam Ahmad al-Ta’ib himself, because I had a very high regard to him all my life, like especially during the time when he was fighting against the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt alongside the military and the Egyptian people. This is like 1990s and 2010s. So he had this history. So I was very surprised to see him aligning with them now, aligning with these forces of evil now, just because motivated by the hatred toward Israel. Unfortunately, this Jew hatred in Egypt and in other Arab countries has blinded people, including policymakers, including what we call quote unquote, moderate Imams like Sheikh al-Tayyib, you know, who actually after these statements, I don’t think he can even fit into this category anymore. Just blinded by these people are blinded by hate toward Israel, that they are willing to endorse Hamas, endorse terrorism, as long as it is directed at Israel, which is very scary to me, very scary, and was very shocking to me.

Sarah: Right, right. Okay. So, how has the 20-point plan that Trump put forth, what has Hamas done and not done to proceed to the second phase of the plan?

Dahlia: Oh, now we are stuck in a very difficult situation in the Middle East. So we have on the ground or on paper first, that 20-point plan looks great, really looks great, so ideal. It’s covering all the issues, starting with the political situation, the military situation, up to even the education and rehabilitation of the people in Gaza. It’s so ideal, so great. But when it comes to implementation on the ground, it’s a different story. For example, we see the U.S. right now, as we speak, is pushing for phase 2 of the deal, of the ceasefire deal or the Trump plan to happen, while there are so many points in phase 1 that has not been completed yet. One of them, and like chief among them, on the very, very top, is the disarmament of Hamas. Until this moment, Hamas did not disarm. Hamas did not disarm. On the contrary, they used the past 2 months since the ceasefire was made to force their control once again on Gaza, either by targeting opposing clans or targeting other families in the strip, and also through rearming. Now, there are rumors or reports actually that they are rearming.

Lindsay Graham, the U.S. senator, was in Israel last week, and he met with officials there, and they discussed exactly this. Hamas is rearming. What should we do? In contrast to that, the US administration is pushing really hard for phase 2 to happen based on what we don’t know. Also, one of the main points in phase 1 that has not been settled yet is who is going to govern Gaza. Hamas is still the political leader of Gaza. We should get Hamas out of Gaza politically and install what Hamas and Egypt suggested to be a technocratic government or administration of Gaza for a certain period of time. Where is this technocratic administration? Who is going to run it? Who’s supervising it? We don’t know. A third point, which is the ISF, the International Stabilization Force in Gaza. This international stabilization force, until today, we don’t know who its members are, which troops are going to be sent and from which countries, what are their mandate. Is it peacekeeping or peace enforcement? Are they going to deal directly with Hamas or not? Or there is another force that’s going to deal with Hamas. We don’t know. We don’t know anything about that. But despite all of these things that has not been achieved yet on phase 1, the U.S. is insisting on pushing into phase 2, which I believe now we are building on a very fragile block, which is phase 1. It will eventually, if it collapses, it will not only renew the conflict between Israel and Hamas and even cause more dramatic situation in Gaza, but in the region, region-wide.

Actually, now, as we speak, the tribes in Sinai are in Egypt, are getting online with the fights that’s happening in Gaza between the clans right now. Maybe some of you heard about the killing of Abu Shabaab, one of the main leaders of one of the clans, a leader of one of the main clans that was opposing Hamas and was supported by Israel publicly. So he was killed. Actually, the family that was involved in killing him has relatives, is part of the Tarabin tribe in Sinai, which means sooner or later we will see this conflict being leaked to Sinai, which will pose, will somehow expand, for sure, will expand the conflict to other territories like Sinai and will cause more national security stress on Egypt, which we will see how Egypt is going to deal with, given also its complicated relationship with Israel, with Qatar, and now also with the pressures being applied on Egypt by the United States. So it’s a very complicated scene. To make it right, like the ceasefire is wonderful. I’m happy it’s still holding, but we have to build for peace, not to build, oh, let’s rush, let’s go. No, it’s not going to work like that.

Sarah: Right. So recently, Egypt and Israel signed a very lucrative gas deal. First of all, who are some of the international parties that will be involved in this deal? We’ve heard many statements from official Egyptian government representatives that this is purely commercial and not at all political. What is your take on this? Will it lead to some sort of stabilization, possibly, between Egypt and Israel?

Dahlia: Of course, to start with, I’m very happy that finally Egypt and Israel did something together after 2 years of so much tension for nothing that has not to do with their direct relationship, actually bilateral relationship. It has very much to do with Gaza and the war on Hamas. So I’m glad at least these tensions are under control now because of this new economic deal. Egypt is saying something true. Yes, it is a commercial deal. It is an economic deal, but we also know that such decisions are not made in Egypt in separation from the political government, from the political leadership. If the political leadership does not agree and endorse that, any economic or commercial deals will not happen. This is how things work in Egypt. So let them say whatever they want to say. We know how things work. So, of course, the political leadership in Egypt endorsed this agreement, and they need this agreement. Now they are marketing it to the people in the Arab world, that, you know, Israel needs us. Israel has nowhere else to send its gas to. But this is not true. Actually, it’s Egypt that needs Israel very much.

I gave you one statistic that may be shocking to some of your audience. Last year, 2024, Egypt, the average importation of gas that Egypt import, okay, the average gas importation, how to phrase it… Okay, one second. So last year, in 2024, Egypt imported daily, on daily basis, 1 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas from Israel. So imagine how dependent Egypt is on Israel when it comes to natural gas, which is like a main vine of life in Egypt. It’s a huge population that needs this power even for electricity, for electricity stations, and so. Also, it’s important for the Egyptian political leadership in terms of its negotiations on other regional issues like the conflict with Ethiopia, for example, over the Nile River. One of the main leverages Egypt is offering is exporting electricity to Africa and to Sudan, and to Ethiopia. So now Egypt is losing this leverage because it doesn’t have enough gas if Israel does not send it to Egypt. So there is a lot of dependency and interdependency between the 2 countries here, 2 neighbors. I don’t see any reason they need to be enemies for the sake of Gaza or Hamas or whatever. This will definitely open the door for pragmatic cooperation between the 2 countries once again, in the context of the Eastern Mediterranean this time, which is usually a hat Egypt likes to exchange when it comes to Israel. Sometimes they put the Middle East hat, they become very hostile, become very aggressive. Sometimes they put the Eastern Mediterranean hat, they become friendly, pragmatic, economic, commercial, and so on.

Sarah: Right. So, how does this trickle down to the average Egyptian? I mean, isn’t this left up to the leadership of Egypt to influence the average Egyptian at this point, that this is good for the average Egyptian’s economy, their welfare, their well-being? Or is the ideological hatred that they are breeding much greater than their benefits?

Dahlia: Of course, this is what the government is trying to do right now. Like, if you follow the Egyptian media, for example, they are trying to promote it. This is a good deal for Egypt, and it’s an economic deal. It’s purely commercial. You know, we are not being friendly with Israel or anything. The reason for that is that it has to do with 2 things. First, the chronic schizophrenia among the Egyptians, who, on one side, Egyptians, including, by the way, the public and the leadership. On one side, they want to continue this historical role of Egypt as a pan-Arabist leader who stands up for Arab causes like the Palestinian cause against Israel, which is an agent to Western imperialism. You know, this narrative. So this is one thing. This is one side of their character, ideology, perception of things in the region. The other side, which is the normal side, has to do with our national security. You as a leader of Egypt or as a citizen of Egypt, you need to look at where your national security is. That’s why, for example, we saw them cheering for Hamas, singing love to the Palestinians day and night, but not opening the border for Palestinian refugees and refusing any Gazan refugees until today to cross the border. The same thing with this deal. So from one side, of course, we are supportive of this, we’re supportive of our brothers and sisters in Gaza and the Palestinian cause and so, but hey, we also have economic interests and security interests and having good relationship with Israel and making deals with them, and so. So this schizophrenia is what is dictating everything when it comes to the relationship between Israel and Egypt.

Sarah: So, I have some time for questions from the audience. Is that okay?

Dahlia: Sure, sure. Let’s do that.

Sarah: Okay, so one of our viewers said there are approximately 2 billion Muslims in the world. What percent think like you? I don’t know how you could ever gauge that sort of thing.

Dahlia: I can’t give a percentage, of course, but I will tell you that, over like radical Islamists are only a minority among the 2 billion Muslims who exist in this world today. If you remember the spectrum I mentioned at the beginning, there are so many Muslims worldwide, many shades of Muslims and Islamists. Many people believe the same way. I believe I met a lot of them. I would tell you something that may cheer you up is that when I was leaving Egypt and receiving all these death threats and hateful messages, I was also receiving messages of support and encouragement from young Egyptians, young Arabs, young Muslims who were telling me, you’re doing the right thing, but we just don’t have the courage to do the same because we know it comes with consequences. So these people do exist. Don’t lose hope.

Sarah: You’ve exhibited remarkable, remarkable courage, Dahlia. That’s one of the reasons I love you so much.

Dahlia: Oh, thank you, Sarah.

Sarah: So there has been a huge uptake of the Egyptian military presence in the Sinai, and it’s beyond the numbers of the 1979 peace treaty. Is there anything that the government can do about this?

Dahlia: Oh, yes, this is a very good question. So first of all, why, where these troops come from? They are not new troops. Some of them were already deployed to Sinai since 2019 in agreement with Israel. Like Israel already approved them within the context of the cooperation that has been very strong and very intense between Egypt and Israel against terrorists in Sinai at that time. So these troops has been there when the Gaza war started, and we started to see people on the border like Gazan refugees trying to come into Sinai. So the Egyptian military deployed more troops from those at the Swiss Canal line. They just moved the majority of them from there closer to the Rafah border in northern Sinai. So these are kind of like not stranger troops to the Sinai area. They know the area very well. So they don’t in any way represent a threat to Israel. I don’t think Egypt, under any reason would want to get into war with Israel, not for the sake of Gazans, not even for any tensions that happened between the two countries. These are only diplomatic, rhetorical tensions, but I assure you, like Egypt will not, Egypt don’t want to get into war with Israel, no matter what is being said in the media. At the same time, I don’t think Israel wants to get into war with Egypt either. Like, why open a new front of war with Egypt? You know, it doesn’t make sense. So it’s not going to happen this way, except that, yes, as you said, unfortunately, it’s a violation to the peace treaty and requires an honest conversation between the two sides, the Israeli side and the Egyptian side, about the peace treaty itself. For so long, this peace treaty was only called in Egypt, at least, a strategic agreement that is only meant to prevent war from the two countries. It’s time now to take it to the next level and make it a real peace agreement between the two countries, real peace, warm peace. They are the most important 2 neighbors alongside Jordan, of course, the three neighbors in the region. If they are stable, if they are cooperating, the whole region will be stable and cooperating.

Sarah: We know how disappointed you were with the statements coming out of Al-Azhar University after October 7. Does that come close to representing the Muslim Brotherhood, do those statements, and mainstream Islam?

Dahlia: Oh, yes, yeah, yeah. It very much represented this ideology, unfortunately, and represented not only the Muslim Brotherhood ideology, but the Islamist ideology that is convincing mainstream Muslims that they are on a mission to do jihad against Israel. You will not be a good Muslim until you liberate Palestine. Ironically, many Muslims today, Quran has a very difficult Arabic language. Even people who are Arabs like myself don’t understand the language of Quran. We don’t say this publicly, actually, but here is a secret, I’m telling you. So most of the Muslims depend on the interpretations of the sheikhs and imams. Unfortunately, most of the sheikhs today are extremists, either Muslim Brotherhood, either Salafists, and so. So most of these interpretations told Muslims that they are on a mission to liberate Palestine, and you will not be a good Muslim until this happens. But the reality is, there is no such thing in Quran. If you read Quran or Hadith or whatever, any like holy texts, there is no mention of Palestine, no mention of even something close. On the contrary, there is a lot of mention of Israel, the story of Moses, the story of Yaqub and Joseph, and even in one of the chapters, it says that this land where all the fight is happening on now, the Canaanite land, is the promised land of the Jewish people, the followers of Moses. Like, there is no doubt about that in Quran, but nobody reads Quran. That’s why, you know, that’s why, unfortunately, we are falling in this narrative and groups like now Al-Azhar or these Imams and Sheikhs are feeding into this narrative for pure political reasons that has nothing to do directly with the religious text or the holy texts in Islam.

Sarah: Dahlia, you are just a remarkable person. I am so honored to know you. I think you are a pure humanitarian that has the power to penetrate through all the layers and layers of the distinctions between us and how we really should all come together.

Dahlia: Thank you.

Sarah: I just adore you, and I can’t wait to come back to the United States and have you over in my home again. Okay.

Dahlia: Thank you so much, Sarah. You’re very kind. Thank you so much.

Sarah: You’re just a gem. Some of our writers have said, Dahlia is absolutely brilliant. She hits the nail right on the head. We love you.

Dahlia: Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Sarah: It’s just a pleasure to know you.

Thank you. Absolutely, my pleasure. Thank you.
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