Things can be summarized as follows: there is nothing new. The wine is the same and the cask is the same; nothing has changed but the marketing and advertising approach. The latest episode of the story is very short but with very old roots dating back to at least two centuries. It seems to be going from bad to worse. While the question was “why are Muslims lagging far behind others?”, it now became “how can Muslims acquit themselves of the charge that they are planning to destroy the world?”
Things can be summarized as follows: there is nothing new. The wine is the same and the cask is the same; nothing has changed but the marketing and advertising approach. The latest episode of the story is very short but with very old roots dating back to at least two centuries. It seems to be going from bad to worse. While the question was “why are Muslims lagging far behind others?”, it now became “how can Muslims acquit themselves of the charge that they are planning to destroy the world?”
During a celebration of Prophet Mohamed’s birthday at the end of 2014 and before completing six months in power, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi called for a “religious revolution” and he reiterated this in two other religious occasions. Before completing two years in power, a response came from the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar who launched “Al-Azhar Strategy for Reform and Modernization.” If Al-Azhar succeeds in achieving El-Sisi’s religious revolution, it will be the quickest and first peaceful religious revolution in history.
El-Sisi’s call was shocking at the time. The audience was stunned by his words and judgements. He described the public as dishonest and disloyal and said that all Egyptians were suffering from misconduct, immorality and chaos. He ascribed all that to a “problematic religious discourse.” Moreover, while explaining that he was not challenging the Islamic creed itself, he described Muslims and the “religious thought” with defaming qualities, saying that Muslims had been sanctifying, for hundreds of years, texts and ideas which “now push the entire Islamic nation to be a source of concern, danger, killing and destruction all over the world.” He wondered: “do Muslims want to destroy the world?” and then launched his call: “We need a religious revolution. The nation is being torn and is destroying itself.” He said the responsibility of “modernizing the religious discourse” lies with the Imam of Al-Azhar.
In his speech to the “Religious establishment”, El-Sisi seemed to establish a complex relationship similar to that of the Roman empire where “the official Roman religion was one of the administrative departments whose task was to regulate the relationship between citizens and the gods.”
Old, unfinished business
The El-Sisi’s strong tone also seemed far way from the new reality established by the January 2014 amended Constitution according to which Al-Azhar became an “independent Islamic scientific body” and its imam is “independent and may not be dismissed.” Thus, the Constitution defined the borders among the state, the government, the parliament and Al-Azhar.
Al-Azhar was closer to that Roman formula in Law 103 of 1961, which reorganized Al-Azhar restructure to match the Nasserist vision of Al-Azhar’s “new” function. Surprisingly, El-Sisi’s rhetoric was similar to that used at the time of issuing that law. In the parliament and before the law was raised for discussion, Anwar Al-Sadat said: “on July 23, 1952, there was a revolution and those who tried to resist it were crushed. Today, there is a new one and those who dare to challenge it will face the same fate.”
The Nasserist law was marketed as “developing and modernizing Al-Azhar and serving Islam.” According to this law, Al-Azhar Imam was “the greatest imam and has the upper hand on all religious affairs and on those studying the Quran and Islamic sciences.” However, like all other Al-Azhar leaders, the grand imam is appointed by a presidential decree. They were previously appointed by a royal decree. Therefore, El-Sisi’s annoyance from the slow response to his vague invitation and his ill-informed insistence reflect the nature of the new, complicated relationship between the state and Al-Azhar.
Surprising as well is the fact that in the still effective Law 103, we come across many of the ambiguous words used by El-Sisi. For him, Al-Azhar College of Islamic Studies for example seeks to “modernize the Islamic culture and liberate it from extras, imperfections and the impacts of political and sectarian bigotry, present it in its original, pure formula, spread the Islamic knowledge in every level and environment, give opinions on the sectarian and creed-related social problems and preach wisely and amiably.”
Modernization is a longstanding demand of the state and Al-Azhar was always invited to support the new political regimes in promoting themselves internally, regionally and internationally. For half a century, Al-Azhar machine has been working, primarily and above all, to serve the state.
However, after the 9/11 events, “modernization” became an urgent “global” demand in order to acquit Islam from the terrorism charges and this became more urgent within the Greater Middle East Initiative which became a source of concern for many regimes in the “Islamic” world. In spring and summer of 2003, the “modernization” machine accelerated in all fields: parliament, government, religious community and culture. However, Al-Azhar modernization was considerably slow. Grand Imam, Mohamed Sayed Tantawi issued a booklet entitled “Forms of Religious Discourse” as an appendix to Al-Azhar Magazine.
Once again, Al-Azhar is invited by the government to respond to new ambiguous threats, strengthen the new political regime and market it worldwide.
Reform and modernization
The introduction of Al-Azhar Imam, Ahmed Al-Tayeb reflects awareness of Al-Azhar new constitutional position and its real influence. Presenting the new strategy on June 2, Al-Tayeb started by highlighting that this strategy was not “new and was supposed to be announced a while ago.” He refrained from linking this strategy with El-Sisi’s call and did not even mention it, but he counter-balanced that by confirming that Al-Azhar is supporting Egypt firmly. He praised the current revivals in the country, including chasing the terrorist groups, and prayed that Allah help El-Sisi. He did not forget to mention the courageous armed forces and to thank the loyal security forces.
The outstanding role of Al-Azhar, enhanced by the Constitution, was evident when Al-Tayeb highlighted that “Al-Azhar has a university with 71 colleges and 500,000 students in addition to 10,000 pre-university institutes with two million students.” This sounds as if saying that Al-Azhar is a tremendous body that the state needs more than it needs the state.”
At first glance, the strategy looks as an act of debt clearance; a bored response to urgent, incomprehensible demands or as if some people wanted to market a defected product. This is suggested at least by its activities: creating social media, TV shows, video clips, a media center, an observatory for electronic fatwas, an electronic portal for Al-Azahar, issuing a newspaper, establishing a TV channel next year, publishing books to correct misconceptions and the perverted thought, organizing extensive meetings in the parks, cafes and the youth centers, employing 500 young leaders to face extremist and terrorist discourse and modifying the school curricula to incorporate modern concepts, developing some academic institutes, and establishing a civil society organization called the World Association for Al-Azhar Graduates and finally planning to hold an international conference for peace at the end of this year to include the Vatican and the Muslim Council of Elders.
Does Al-Azhar not look like a small media production company or a civil association with limited funding? Does this strategy not look like a “religious revolution”?
The strategy is not in harmony with the insistence of religious leaders on considering Al-Azhar as a “the world’s foremost Islamic authority and the defender of Islam” and their description of the current situation as “absolutely the most dangerous moment because it undermines Islam’s foundations of tolerance, makes Islam repulsive and portrays it as the other face of terrorism.”
Allegations and truth
One more striking thing is a recent article entitled They claim and We Correct on Al-Azhar website. The article presented three main arguments which constitute the main features of ISISs political rhetoric. In making the corrections, Al-Azhar did the same as Ali Abdel Razek in his book Islam and the Foundations of Political Power, published in 1925. Ironically enough, Al-Azhar sacked Abdel Razek himself because of that book and now it is championing his ideas as representing “the true Islam”. These ideas include: the caliphate is not an Islamic foundation. It is a mundane, political matter rather than a religious one. The Quran and the Sunnah never talk about the method of choosing a caliph. However, Al-Azhar does not mention Abdel Razek’s idea that “the caliphate is a curse on Islam and Muslims and the origin of corruption and evil.”
Al-Azhar efforts tell us that “history repeats itself”; the same battles are fought again but with different positons of the warriors. The caliphate, political conflict, power and occupation were the elements of old battles; strangely enough, these constitute a pillar of the new battles, at least from Al-Azhar’s perspective.
