It would be nice if all the scholars and teachers in the Muslim world follow through with this.
Egypt deploys scholars to teach moderate Islam
Jun 02, 2015 - Mahmoud Mourad And Yara Bayoumy |
Egyptians walk outside the Al-Azhar mosque in Cairo. — AFP
In his battle against militant Islam, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is relying not just on bomber planes and soldiers but on white-turbaned clerics from Al-Azhar, Egypt’s 1,000-year-old centre for Islamic learning. He wants clerics to counter radicalism in the classroom.
In a televised speech in January at an Al-Azhar conference centre in Cairo, Sisi called for “a religious revolution” in Islam. Radicalised thinking, he told the audience of Islamic scholars, had become “a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world.”
That had to change — and the scholars had a leading role to play, in schools, mosques and on the airwaves.
“You, imams, are responsible before Allah. The entire world is waiting. The entire world is waiting for your next word because this nation is being torn apart.”
Surprised by the President’s bluntness, the scholars went “white as sheets,” some of those in the audience told a Western official.
The President’s warning is part of a much larger project. To contain the radical Islamist movement roiling his nation, Sisi has most conspicuously been using the law and brute force. But he is also promoting a more moderate and less politicised version of the faith.
In that struggle the Al-Azhar institution is one of the most important fronts for Sisi — and for the wider region. The outcome of the struggle in Egypt, the intellectual and cultural capital of the Arab world, has ramifications far beyond its borders.
Continue reading at:
Egypt deploys scholars to teach moderate Islam The Asian Age?
Egypt deploys scholars to teach moderate Islam
Jun 02, 2015 - Mahmoud Mourad And Yara Bayoumy |
Egyptians walk outside the Al-Azhar mosque in Cairo. — AFP
In his battle against militant Islam, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is relying not just on bomber planes and soldiers but on white-turbaned clerics from Al-Azhar, Egypt’s 1,000-year-old centre for Islamic learning. He wants clerics to counter radicalism in the classroom.
In a televised speech in January at an Al-Azhar conference centre in Cairo, Sisi called for “a religious revolution” in Islam. Radicalised thinking, he told the audience of Islamic scholars, had become “a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world.”
That had to change — and the scholars had a leading role to play, in schools, mosques and on the airwaves.
“You, imams, are responsible before Allah. The entire world is waiting. The entire world is waiting for your next word because this nation is being torn apart.”
Surprised by the President’s bluntness, the scholars went “white as sheets,” some of those in the audience told a Western official.
The President’s warning is part of a much larger project. To contain the radical Islamist movement roiling his nation, Sisi has most conspicuously been using the law and brute force. But he is also promoting a more moderate and less politicised version of the faith.
In that struggle the Al-Azhar institution is one of the most important fronts for Sisi — and for the wider region. The outcome of the struggle in Egypt, the intellectual and cultural capital of the Arab world, has ramifications far beyond its borders.
Continue reading at:
Egypt deploys scholars to teach moderate Islam The Asian Age?
