Topping coverage of Egypt on a slow news morning is the nation’s top billing among the Sunni Arab alliance that US President Donald Trump was promoting during his Middle East tour.

Having the US support forming a NATO-like pact between the Arab states would be a “terrible mistake,” Rashid Khalidi writes for The Guardian. He says the US would be taking sides in a sectarian conflict and would alienate Shia populations and Iran. The Washington Post appearing to have suffered collective writer’s block: The best its writers can muster is to ridicule El Sisi, Trump and King Salman’s opening of the new Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology.

Never one to miss an opportunity for some political payback for the thrashing he took in the Republican primaries last year, Sen. Marco Rubio took to CNN’s State of the Union to criticize Trump’s speech in Saudi Arabia and for not pressing human rights with El Sisi and GCC leaders (watch, runtime: 15:38).

Amira Sayed Ahmed asks if Egypt is serious about enforcing a bill that criminalizes the release of public religious edicts without a license, in a piece for Al-Monitor. The bill comes with a fine and a potential jail sentence and restricts issuing fatwas to four official entities. Salafists are concerned about the bill, who say it limits their freedom of expression.

Forcing a change to the religious discourse is not the way to counter terrorism, researcher Georges Fahmi argues in a piece published by The Conversation Africa and picked up by The Huffington Post. Youth empowerment politically and economically is the way to go, in addition to refuting Salafi ideas. In a study that is yet to be published, 95% of jihadists partook in violence for reasons other than rigid religious ideas. “Most were spurred to extremism by their political and social conditions,” he posits.

Families living in the Zabaleen districts of Cairo are trading their health for livelihood, Hazem Badr writes for SciDev. Badr says the residents are vehemently opposed to the proposed garbage collection kiosks project by the government.