Pope on peace mission to Egypt

UNIVERSITY AT ODDS WITH PRESIDENT Former army officer Sisi attempts to reshape Islamic thought.

When Pope Francis visits Egypt’s AlAzhar this week, he will find support for his message of peace in the venerable Islamic authority praised as a bulwark against extremism.

But his visit comes as Al-Azhar, which runs one of the world’s oldest universities, is under fire from critics within Egypt who say the Sunni Muslim institution has itself become part of the problem.

Al-Azhar had been at the centre of a messy collision between politics and theology since President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi began campaigning for religious reforms, with profound implications for Islamic doctrine.

A former army chief who overthrew his Islamist predecessor in 2013, Sisi believes that Islamist extremists have not been properly challenged on theological grounds.

“He thinks that extremist ideas have thoroughly infiltrated Muslim societies and they are latent” but could set off “a tidal wave of devastation”, said a member of a foreign delegation that met Sisi.

Al-Azhar and its Grand Imam, Ahmed al-Tayeb, have warily endorsed Sisi’s call for reforms.

Dating back almost 1 000 years, the prestigious institution runs a university and schools across the country, and thousands of international students from as far as China come to study religion and return home as clerics.

The clergy of the traditional Sunni bastion loathes the theology of jihadists inspired by the puritan Salafism dominant in Saudi Arabia.

Privately, however, many of AlAzhar’s clergy and professors resent the former army officer’s attempt to reshape Islamic thought.

The manner in which he pushed for the reforms further scandalised some clerics, especially when he suggested that he would complain about them to God if his call went unheeded.

“By God, I will contest you before God on the Day of Judgement,” Sisi told the clerics in a 2015 speech outlining the need for religious reforms.

“The religious establishment – not all of it but most of it – is pretty resistant to the idea of somebody from outside interfering or stipulating how religion and religious discourse should function,” said H.A. Hellyer, a non-resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council.

In a meeting with another foreign delegation, “Tayeb openly scoffed at the idea for religious reform that Sisi has promoted”, a delegation member told AFP, saying “the problem is unemployment and inequality”. – AFP