CAIRO: Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who came to power after a bloody crackdown, called on Wednesday for religious reforms to counter extremists in a speech to Islamic clerics. Al-Sisi has often warned that religious extremism presents a vital threat to the region, which he suggested lags in social development including women’s rights. “Not enough work has been done to confront the ideology of extremists, who have roiled the region and are waging a bloody insurgency in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula,” he said. “We are on a mission during one of the most difficult periods, not only for Egypt, but for all Arab and Muslim states,” the Egyptian president said in the televised speech. “Are we the most knowledgeable of nations,” he asked, referring to Muslim countries. “Are we the most tolerant nation or the nation that most respects women? If you found that the flaw was only in Egypt, we’d say okay but I wonder, in how many of these 50 (Muslim-dominated) countries is this situation present,” he again asked. “Early Islamic scholars confronted sayings and traditions wrongly attributed to Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him),” he said, adding that the Islamic law was partly based on the prophet’s sayings that are deemed authentic. “We can perform the same role but regarding other things,” al-Sisi said, without elaborating. “I fear that we have not, until now, found the real path to confronting fanaticism and extremism. Look at the map of extremism in the world,” he added. The former army chief was elected president in 2014 almost a year after he overthrew Mohamed Morsi in 2013 following mass protests, a move initially met with Western opprobrium. The retired field marshal has since presented himself as an authority on the dangers of religious extremism and found acceptance among Western countries as an ally in the war against the Islamic State militants. Egypt is battling an affiliate of the group in the Sinai Peninsula which has killed hundreds of soldiers and policemen and also brought down a Russian passenger plane with 224 people on board. However, al-Sisi’s calls for reforms in the Islamic thought have also met with scepticism by opponents, who accuse his security services of extensive human rights abuses. More than 1,000 pro-Morsi protesters have been killed in clashes since his overthrow on July 3, out of which more than 600 were killed in a single day when police personnel dispersed a Cairo protest camp. Thousands have been jailed and critics say the crackdown has helped radicalise more moderate people while strengthening extremists who disavowed their democratic approach.